Finally, ignition device law for OUI offenders

While the abortion-access issue has dominated most of the conversation about the state Legislature’s recently passed spending plan, lawmakers approved another significant — and likewise nonbudgetary — measure that had previously stalled on Beacon Hill.

Legislators finally gave the green light to mandating ignition interlock devices in vehicles driven by first-time drunken-driving offenders.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) has been calling on lawmakers for years to adopt that deterrent as another tool to improve public safety in Massachusetts and curb instances of people driving while drunk.

As far back as October 2009, MADD representatives had testified before legislative committees in support of a bill that would have expanded the state’s ignition-interlock program to include all convicted OUI offenders.

“In 2007, more than 120 people were killed in Massachusetts and nearly 13,000 are killed (nationwide) annually as a result of drunken-driving crashes,” MADD Massachusetts spokesman David Deluliis wrote in a prepared statement in advance of that Statehouse appearance.

In February 2016, MADD and other advocates again urged support of a Senate bill before the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation that called for ignition interlock devices on all vehicles driven by firsttime drunken-driving offenders.

According to a report presented at the time, those devices had prevented more than 240,000 instances of drinking and driving in Massachusetts, and more than 12.7 million nationally in the past 10 years.

Imagine all the lives that could have been saved and serious injuries prevented had this language been approved earlier?

We don’t know the driving force behind the Senate’s stonewalling of this common-sense legislation in prior sessions. We had asked House members to convince their Senate colleagues to simply follow the lead of every other state in this matter.

This time, the Senate adopted an amendment offered by Minority Leader Sen. Bruce Tarr, who reminded lawmakers that Massachusetts stands alone as the only state that hasn’t taken this preventative step with first-time offenders.

The Senate had previously failed to support a similar measure authored by Tarr, who cited MADD statistics that drunken-driving deaths have risen 9% since 2014 while arrests are down.

“We have already waited too long to authorize this important tool which can prevent tragedy on our state’s roadways,” Tarr said after his amendment was approved. He added that the measure could “stem the pain and harm from the senseless loss of life at the hands of a drunk driver that could have been prevented with time-tested and roadtested technology.”

This budget rider authorizes the registrar of motor vehicles, in all cases involving defendants who operated a vehicle with a blood alcohol level of 0.15 or higher, to place a restriction on hardship licenses requiring them to have an ignition interlock device installed on each vehicle they own or lease.

The device is connected to the ignition of a vehicle and prevents it from starting if the presence of alcohol is detected when the driver blows into a tube. They are already required for repeat offenders, with the costs covered by the guilty parties.

Unlike those operating under the influence of other drugs — especially marijuana — we have proven technology that can accurately identify alcohol-compromised motorists.

We should use every tool at our disposal to limit the possibility of impaired-driving deaths and injuries.

This measure gets our unequivocal support, and undoubtedly the governor’s as well.