A legal loophole may have allowed hundreds of people to avoid having devices installed in their vehicles designed to prevent them from driving after drinking, a lawmaker said.
The loophole has turned the ignition lock requirement into a negotiating point in some plea bargains, Sen. Drew Perkins told the Casper Star-Tribune in Sunday’s editions.
“There were probably several hundred first-time DUIs that would have been required to have ignition interlocks that didn’t happen,” said Perkins, a Casper Republican.
The law, which took effect last year, requires first-time drinking-and-driving offenders to have the devices on their vehicles for six months if their blood-alcohol level was 0.15 percent or more.
A second DUI conviction requires drivers to use the device for one year, and a third means using it for two years. With four or more DUI convictions, a driver must operate only vehicles with ignition control devices for life.
Perkins said the law relies only on blood-alcohol levels listed in paperwork filed after a DUI conviction. If the blood-alcohol level isn’t on those documents, the state can’t require the device, even if the level is listed on arrest documents.
State statistics show that fewer than 20 percent of the 745 drivers who met that criteria actually installed the devices between July 2009, when the program started, and the end of October.
Don Edington, manager of the state Transportation Department driver services program, said officials don’t know for certain why the others didn’t.
A total of 500 devices have been installed in that period, including first-time and repeat offenders, he said.
The law has other loopholes, the newspaper reported. Offenders can ignore the requirement to install the device, have their licenses suspended and continue to drive illegally.
Perkins said he plans to sponsor a bill in the next session to close the loopholes.
