Ignition interlocks lower New Mexico’s drunken-driving rate

Los Angeles Times

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — For seven years, Horace, a four-time convicted drunken driver, has lived with an electronic probation officer in the front seat of his red sedan. The device, an “ignition interlock,” acts as a breath-alcohol analyzer and requires him to prove he’s sober before the engine will start.

New Mexico, which led the United States in alcohol-related crash rates for years, in 2005 became the first state in the nation to require the interlock for every convicted drunken driver. The interlock legislation has been the centerpiece of the state’s sweeping anti-drunken-driving efforts, which include more sobriety checkpoints, tougher mandatory sentencing laws for driving while intoxicated and the creation of a DWI czar, the nation’s first.

The initiatives have paid off.

New Mexico, home to high rates of alcohol abuse and miles and miles of open road, is ranked 25th among the states in alcohol-related fatal crash rates and is expected to rank lower when the latest rankings are compiled later this year. Between 2004 and 2008, the number of driving-while-intoxicated fatalities here dropped 35 percent, from 219 to 143.

“We want all 50 states to do what New Mexico has done,” said Chuck Hurley, the chief executive of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. MADD has mounted an aggressive campaign to persuade the rest of the country to require interlocks.

If each of the more than 1.4 million Americans convicted each year of drunken driving was forced to install one, Hurley said, 4,000 lives would be saved annually.

Eleven states have phased in mandatory interlock laws since New Mexico did so, including six this year.