North Carolina Launches 1999 Spring 'Booze It & Lose It' Program
19 April 1999
North Carolina Launches 1999 Spring 'Booze It & Lose It' Program Crackdown on Drunk Drivers Begins This Weekend
CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 16 -- Starting today, law enforcement
officers across North Carolina begin stepped-up enforcement of
driving-while-impaired (DWI) laws with "Booze It & Lose It" sobriety
checkpoints and roving patrols.
"Law enforcement officers all over the state will be cracking down on
impaired drivers," Lt. Gov. Dennis Wicker said today at the "Booze It & Lose
It" kickoff at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center in Charlotte.
"Drunk drivers will be caught and punished in accordance with law.
"This year's spring 'Booze It & Lose It' campaign is not held in
conjunction with any special holiday," Wicker said. "The fact is tragedies
from drunk driving can occur any time of the year -- not just during the
holidays. We want people to know that law enforcement officers will be out
stopping drunk drivers no matter what the season."
To launch "Booze It & Lose It" in downtown Charlotte today, city police
agencies, County sheriffs' offices, North Carolina State Highway Patrol
troopers, and other state law enforcement agencies joined Wicker, Mothers
Against Drunk Driving State Chair Cheryl Jones, and Rhonda Smith, a Gastonia
woman whose father was killed in February by a repeat DWI offender. North
Carolina law enforcement agencies will join forces the next two weeks to
strictly enforce the drunk driving laws. Sobriety checkpoints will be held
this weekend in communities across the state, including Asheville, Charlotte,
Greensboro, Greenville, and Raleigh. Other checkpoints will follow throughout
the campaign.
In addition, public service announcements will air on cable television
featuring local law enforcement officers from across the state. The officers
will remind motorists that it's "Booze It & Lose It" and that there are no
excuses when it comes to drinking and driving.
This spring, law enforcement officers have even stronger tools to stop
drunk driving during "Booze It & Lose It." New laws, which took effect last
December, doubled the maximum fines for all DWI offenses, reinforced the
state's "zero-tolerance" law for underage drunk drivers, and set the nation's
first "zero-tolerance" law for truck drivers and school bus drivers.
"These laws, coupled with the state's 0.08 blood-alcohol level and vehicle
impoundment law, give North Carolina some of the toughest impaired driving
laws in the nation," said Wicker, who is chairman of the Governor's Task Force
on Driving While Impaired. Wicker called for passage of new legislation,
recommended by the task force and introduced Thursday before the General
Assembly, that will make the state's drunk driving laws even tougher --
especially for repeat offenders.
One of the bill's key elements would establish lower breath-alcohol levels
for repeat offenders. After a first offense, a person could not drive with a
breath-alcohol content (BAC) greater than 0.04 for a period of seven years.
After a first offense, a person is restricted to a zero-tolerance, of 0.00
BAC, for a period of seven years.
Other parts of the bill would require an ignition interlock for repeat
offenders and drivers with a BAC level over 0.16, strengthen the open
container law, and close a loophole in the under-age 21 drinking law. The
bill would allow the horizontal gaze nystagmus test, the so-called "eye
sobriety test," to be admissible in court and it would make the result of the
preliminary breath-testing device admissible as proof of evidence in cases
dealing with the violation of a limited driving privilege.
"These proposed laws will send a strong message that North Carolina means
business when it comes to stopping drunk driving," said Wicker. "It will also
give law enforcement additional tools to crack down on drunk drivers,
especially repeat offenders."
About a third of all drivers arrested for DWI in the United States are
repeat offenders, and one out of eight intoxicated drivers in fatal crashes
has had a prior DWI conviction within the past three years, according to the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
MADD State Chair Cheryl Jones said the organization is 100 percent behind
the proposed law, and the "Booze It & Lose It" program.
"With the 'Booze It & Lose It' campaign, North Carolina is on the
forefront of national efforts to stop drunk driving," Jones said. "MADD
chapters across the state will continue to support the program and the law
enforcement officers who have made it so successful."
To assist law enforcement officers at sobriety checkpoints, two
breath-alcohol testing mobile units, better known as BATmobiles, will be in
operation during "Booze It & Lose It." The state's first BATmobile,
coordinated by the Forensic Tests for Alcohol Branch of the Department of
Health and Human Services, has been on the road for more than two years. Last
year, the Highway Patrol put into service its own BATmobile.
Rhonda Smith of Gastonia explained how her 73-year-old father, Lewis
Edward Watford Sr., was killed in February by a repeat DWI offender. Smith
said the incident changed her family's life.
"You don't expect drunks to be out on the road at 11:30 in the morning,
and you certainly never dream one will run a red light, crash into your
daddy's car and push him 65 feet into two other cars," Smith said. "My Daddy
never had a chance. And the fact is, anyone that driver passed could have
been a victim that day.
"What I want is for lawmakers to think about the hundreds of people killed
or injured -- people like my daddy -- each year by drunk drivers," Smith said.
"I want them to work together for stronger laws that will give innocent
motorists a fighting chance."
North Carolina is continuing the "Booze It & Lose It" campaign in an
effort to lower the number of impaired drivers on the highways, saving lives
and reducing health-care costs. A study showed the campaign cut in half the
number of intoxicated drivers found at checkpoints and helped reduce
alcohol-related fatalities in North Carolina.
Since the start of the Governor's Highway Safety Initiative in 1993, law
officers statewide have conducted more than 26,000 checkpoints and charged
more than 44,000 offenders with driving while impaired.
