North Carolina Launches 1999 Spring 'Booze It & Lose It' Program
19 April 1999
North Carolina Launches 1999 Spring 'Booze It & Lose It' ProgramCrackdown 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.