San Luis R.C. policy helps impaired drivers avoid jail
Motorists caught drinking and driving in San Luis Rio Colorado, Son., may get off with a fine only if they haven’t gone too far over the legal limit.
Under a program recently started by the border city’s police, they won’t go to jail and their automobiles won’t be impounded — that is, if friends, family members or other designated drivers will take their keys and drive them home.
But they’ll only get that break if they don’t have any other violations. And they’ll still have to pay a fine for what was is defined in a Sonora traffic law as driving with “aliento alcoholico” — “alcoholic breath.”
“Giving the opportunity to someone to call someone else or to designate a driver doesn’t mean they avoid a fine,” said Jorge Ramirez, the city’s traffic police chief. “The fine will be assessed and whoever is designated to drive the vehicle will have to sign as the responsible party.”
A Sonora state law that took effect in 2014 changed the blood-alcohol content limit for a driving from 0.08 to 0.04, with increasingly severe fines and jail sentences imposed on a graduated scale depending on the level of the driver’s impairment or intoxication.
Under the law, a driver with a bloodalcohol reading of 0.04 to 0.07, as measured by a Breathalyzer, is considered to have “alcoholic breath,” while one with a reading of 0.08 or more is considered intoxicated and thus subject to harsher penalties.
The law comes amid efforts by legislators and police across Sonora and other Mexican states to crack down on one of the leading factors for traffic accidents. In the first four months of 2016 — the most recent year for which statistics are available — drinking was identified as a factor in 74 of 478 accidents occurring in and around San Luis Rio Colorado, police said.
In recent months, San Luis Rio Colorado police have been setting up checkpoints at random locations in the city on weekends in efforts to catch drunk or impaired drivers.
While a statewide law changes the limit for impaired driving, it gives Sonora’s cities the flexibility — with the approval of their city councils — to allow drivers whose impairment levels fall within the range of “alcoholic breath” to call a designated driver in lieu of going to jail.
But, said Ramirez, leniency will be shown only to those drivers who have current driver’s licenses and whose license plates and vehicle paperwork are in order.
During the first weekend of the new policy was applied, 108 motorists who were stopped at checkpoints around the city were found either to be drinking with alcoholic breath or to meet the higher threshold for intoxicated driving. Of those, 59 avoided jail and impoundment of their vehicles.
Apart from the checkpoints, police have joined with operators of downtown bars and nightclubs to launch Taxi Amigo, in which customers who have had too much to drink can catch rides home in cabs assigned to the new program.