UPDATE June 7, 2008: HB2643 passed and signed. Score one for Napalitano. So the interlock stays at a year.
UPDATE April 30, 2008: The governor vetoed the bill, citing the interlock compromise as untenable. Liquor industy lobbyiests allowed House Speaker Jim Weiers to allow the bill to go forth because is contained the interlock reduction. There were perfectly good bills — being blocked — that would have given use perfectly sensible reform, e.g. the fix for conflicting penalties for extreme DUI.
In an unusual stroke of consistency, a bunch of competing DUI changes were rolled up and passed. House Bill HB2395 (48th legislature, 2nd regular session) was passed and awaits governor.It straightens out some consistency problems with recent changes to extreme DUI penalties — extreme (>0.15 BAC gets mandatory 30 days in jail).The most notable change is cutting the time period for having an ignition interlock from 12 months to 6 months for first-time offenders. This was seen as a necessary compromise.See DUI bill passes with help from speaker: Use of breath-test device would be cut for 1st offense, Scott Wong, The Arizona Republic, Apr. 25, 2008
“Sen. Jim Waring, who sponsored two of the original DUI bills, praised the omnibus bill’s passage, saying it builds on the state’s drunken-driving laws that have drastically reduced the number of DUI-related fatalities and accidents in recent years”. — Drastic? Really? I don’t see anything drastic, e.g. the percentage of alcohol-related fatalities has hovered in the mid-40’s% for 1998-2006.
I found the references to lobbyists funny in a sad way: “Lobbyists for the interlock industry, however, said interlock laws enacted last year shouldn’t be meddled with. The laws only took effect last fall and the true impact is still unknown. ‘There hasn’t been enough time,’ said lobbyist Alberto Gutier, the former director of the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety who now represents the Arizona Interlock Distributors Association. ‘It would be nice to have more data to understand what the effect is in terms of crashes and fatalities.’ ” — a not unreasonable sentiment, that is to say: we won’t know how much, if at all, a 12 month interlock would help.
And this: “Rodney Thomas, who once signed with the Arizona Cardinals, agreed. The former Clemson University linebacker, who struggled for several years to make it in the NFL, saw his pro football dreams dashed when he was struck by a drunken driver in north Scottsdale in 2005….Today, Thomas has turned his career-ending accident into an entrepreneurial endeavor. He is a managing partner in Scottsdale-based Safe Harbor, which sells Drager interlock devices in Arizona.”