Get a DUI, take a deep breath

Getting a DUI this year is really going to blow.

Literally.

If you get a DUI in 2009 and your license is statutorily suspended, even if you're a first-time offender, you'll be required to install an ignition interlock device that renders your car unstartable unless you blow into it to demonstrate you're not drunk. The device also requires the driver to periodically blow again during the drive to ensure his or her continued sobriety.

The device won't stop the car in mid-drive, but it will begin to honk the horn and flash the lights.

While Illinois has mandated the device for certain repeat DUI offenders for some time, it's now going to make it mandatory for first-time offenders, bringing Illinois into the ranks of some of the strictest states in the country.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving hails the law as a breakthrough for Illinois that other states should emulate, but some question the law's effectiveness and call it heavy-handed.

About 500 Illinois residents still die from alcohol-related crashes each year, said Susan McKinney, head of the Secretary of State's Breath Alcohol Ignition Interlock Device division, or BAIID. The new law will help reduce that, she said.

McKinney acknowledged the inconvenience and cost, but even first-time offenders are still drunk and can still kill people, she said, so she hasn't much sympathy.

Donald Ramsell, a Wheaton defense attorney specializing in DUI defense, questions whether the law will really do what it's designed to do and whether it punishes people before conviction - as well as their relatives who use the same vehicle.

"It's a ridiculous law," said Ramsell.

Ramsell points out that the law, by design, puts a device on cars for only 6-12 months after a first arrest. By his estimate, less than 1 percent of first-time arrestees are rearrested within 12 months. Of 50,000 people arrested each year for DUI, that's about 500 people who will re-offend, he said.

With a cost of about $100 a month in installation and monitoring fees, multiplied by the 30,000 devices the Secretary of State's office estimates will be installed annually, that's $18 million to $36 million a year going to a handful of select companies authorized by the state to install the devices.

Because the devices are installed before a conviction, Ramsell said, those found innocent are still punished, and other drivers of a DUI offender's car will have to breathe into the device, thus paying for the sins of the drinker.

"It's all good on paper, but I think there's probably something else we can do with $36 million a year," Ramsell said, like improving the train system or offering free rides from bars.

But proponents say the law is effective.

Susan McKeigue, the executive director of MADD-Illinois, said New Mexico experienced a 25 percent drop in alcohol-related fatalities the first year it enacted the same law. Dave Druker of the Illinois Secretary of State's office cited a similar number, a 22 percent drop. Both cited national MADD offices as the source for the figures, but the actual declines are lower.

New Mexico, which enacted the law June 17, 2005, experienced 194 fatalities that year, an 11 percent drop from 219 fatalities in 2004. However, the last six months of 2005, when the law was in effect, were statistically unchanged from the last six months of 2004: 115 deaths in the last half of 2004 and 116 in the last half of 2005.

New Mexico touts the law's efficacy, and its statistics show a 19 percent drop in fatalities from 2004 to 2007. But if the time frame is broadened to 1998, the drop is about 6 percent, from 188 deaths in 1998 to 177 in 2007.

Fatalities aren't the whole story, and New Mexico's 2006 DUI report notes that the devices prevented 63,000 trips by drivers with alcohol in their system. The data comes from the devices, which record all successful and failed attempts at starting and driving interlocked cars.

McKeigue noted drops in fatality percentages may appear to be small, even at her number of 25 percent. But, noted McKeigue, "if it's your husband and your wife and your kid, you're very happy that those are people who are not killed."