Groups join to rid roads of OUI drivers

WASHINGTON — Top federal safety officials formed an alliance Wednesday with two dozen private groups in a nationwide effort to take away the licenses of alleged drunken drivers.

The aim is to give police the power to suspend the license of a driver who refuses to take or fails to pass a roadside breath test for alcohol consumption.

“Without such laws, we have to go through the court system, and if we’re not able to get a trial date, that particular drunk’s license might not be pulled for months,” said National Traffic Safety Administrator Jerry R. Curry.

More than 1.6 million drivers are arrested each year on drunken driving charges, and about half of all the 45,000 traffic fatalities each year are alcohol-related, officials said.

Automatic revocation laws already are in effect in 29 states, but Curry and National Transportation Safety Board Chairman James L. Kolstad called for a campaign to pass similar laws in the rest of the nation.

The license revocation is done administratively, not judicially. A non-judicial hearing may be held if the driver appeals. The laws, officials said, have passed all court tests in states where they have been applied.

In most states, 0.10 percent is the level of alcohol in the blood that the law says is illegal for drivers. Four states — Colorado, Oregon, Maine and Utah — have set the level at a more stringent 0.08 percent.

The Surgeon General has recommended that all states adopt the tougher law and eventually make the level as low as 0.04 percent for adults and zero for any driver under 21.

“The fact that in the morning a driver has a license, and if he or she is foolish and drinks at lunchtime and then fails a breath test, the license is lost on the spot” would be a strong incentive against drinking and driving, Kolstad said.

Curry said he had followed drunken drivers through the process of losing their licenses, taken to a hospital for verifying tests, processed at a police station and then having to be driven home.

“It’s an absolutely debilitating experience,” he said. “You think you’re a criminal.