During a hearing Wednesday morning on new bills aimed at cracking down on dangerous driving, the D.C. Council expressed concern over a lack of enforcement of a current law to prevent drunken driving.
As council members were preparing for a hearing on four proposed bills to keep dangerous drivers off District streets, it was discovered that only eight D.C. residents convicted of driving under the influence have interlocking devices on their vehicles.
The other 335 people who are required to have them to drive, do not have them installed.
“Three-hundred and thirty-five people fell through the cracks here,” said D.C. Council member Charles Allen.
D.C. made the Breathalyzer ignition program mandatory for drunken driving offenses last year in order to get a reinstated license. The driver must blow into the device and if their breath alcohol level is at 0.020 or above, the vehicle will not start.
“We’ve got to crack down on this a lot harder and a lot faster, with a much greater sense of urgency,” Allen said.
Gabriel Robinson, director of the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles, said that while the program is mandatory to get a driver’s license back, some might decide it’s not worth it.
Robinson confirmed during the hearing that those 335 people convicted of driving under the influence have had their licenses revoked.
“Some people will accept their revocation and live with it and never get a license again,” Robinson said.
Allen said that he wants to work with the District’s DMV to get more people enrolled in the program immediately.
See details on the four bills being proposed in D.C. to combat dangerous driving here.
