Sponsor waters down DUI legislation

To provide more flexibility to law enforcement, the sponsor of a bill that would significantly tighten DUI laws for adult drunken drivers with minors in their vehicles plans to slightly back off her original version.

Rep. Dana Love, R-Syracuse, said Friday that she is working on amendments to HB128 that would increase the blood alcohol content to .05 for any adult driving with minors under 18, and that the lowered limit would only apply to somebody with a previous DUI offense. Originally, the bill made it a DUI offense for any adult who had a level of .04 and was driving anyone under 18.

HB128 also adds a zero-tolerance provision for those nabbed driving on revoked or conditional licenses who have any amount of alcohol in their system. The enhanced penalty would include a class- B misdemeanor with jail requirements.

The changes were suggested after talks with law enforcement officials and now will only punish drivers who seem to have a habitual problem, said Love, who wants to keep Utah on the forefront of enforcement law.

"Most people learn their lessons," she said. "This targets the serious repeat offenders."

Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which had not taken a position on the .04 provision, played a role in redrafting Love's bill, said Paul Boyden, executive director of the Statewide Association of Prosecutors.

"This is in line with a new study and recommendation from MADD," Boyden said.

In the MADD study, which began in 1999 and is soon to be released, experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, law enforcement, prosecutors, public health officials and others studied child endangerment as it relates to DUI, Utah's MADD director Art Brown said.

"Their recommendation was to target the problem people who haul their kids around and those are second offenders at the .05 level," said Brown. "The other recommendation was if you're hauling somebody young around you're going to get zero tolerance."

The Utah Substance Abuse and Anti-Violence Council also support Love's changes. Boyden said law enforcement agencies are also expected to concur. Police had expressed concerns about .04 blood alcohol level mostly because of its impact on enforcement.

UHP's 10-officer DUI enforcement team arrests an average of 14,000 drunk drivers annually. Most have an average blood alcohol level of .15, according to Lt. Steve Winward, who trains state troopers to conduct field sobriety tests.

"The only big issue is that we don't really have the manpower to do this," said Winward. "As many people as are out drinking and driving, if an officer is dealing with an .04 there may be several drivers go past him that are more seriously impaired."

Bumping up to .05 is a change only detectable by machines, but it will still increase highway safety, UHP Lt. Ron Ostler said.

Love said that she also hoped that the hospitality and tourism industries would back her revised bill, despite criticism that it was bad for Utah's image.

Melva Sine, president of the Utah Restaurant Association, said that the organization does not support any legislation that reduces the blood alcohol level to lower than the national and Utah standard of .08. That limit has proven to be effective, both in terms of monitoring at the service end and enforcing, she said.

"If you go below the national standard, it's a black eye for the state," she said. "They say they want to be leaders in this, but what good does it do when the .08 limit has been proven to work?"

She said that an .05 limit would be a burden for restaurants and servers, who might have to be retrained to keep patrons under the legal limit. It would also be very difficult to spot a person who is legally drunk by the .05 standard.

"You're going to have to create a whole new set of standards," she said.

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