Mandatory Car Breathalyzers, Essay Example

All cars manufactured in the United States should be equipped with ignition-interlock devices that test for blood alcohols levels.  While efforts to legislate this are in place, and while some states are mandating this equipment for drivers with prior convictions for driving under the influence, there remains a widespread resistance to such a law.  Simply, Americans tend to view their vehicles as highly personal property, as they feel driving is a fundamental liberty, or constitutional right.  These feelings may be understandable, but they are removed from the massive realities in place concerning the issue.

The most potent reality supporting mandatory car breathalyzers is the inescapable fact that millions die or are injured in car accidents every year unnecessarily.  Approximately every half hour, someone dies in a car crash attributed to alcohol, and someone is injured every two minutes for the same reason (Bounds, Darnell, Shea, & Agnor  150).  As noted, the identified cause of these accidents, being under the influence of alcohol, can easily be eliminated.  This is why, in fact, drunk driving episodes are not technically considered accidents; they are crimes, simply because the circumstances of them are completely avoidable (Bounds et al  150).  As they are not crimes based on malicious intent, the technology simply removes the potential.

Additionally, an arrest for DUI does nor effectively help the issue.  Statistics support that at least one-third of drivers arrested for driving while intoxicated are repeat offenders (MADD).  What is more disturbing about this fact is that this only reflects those drivers stopped by the police.  It seems likely, then, that other offenders, “getting away with it,” would be more encouraged to drink and drive.  It is reasonable to believe that a near-accident and/or arrest would instill in a driver an urgency to drive sober, but this plainly cannot be the case, so the law must take action.

The law in place itself, accepted by most Americans, clearly illustrates the constitutionality of equipping all cars with breathalyzers.  In most states today, a driver may refuse to take a breathalyzer test at the accident scene; that is their legal right.  However, the driver’s license is usually confiscated by the authorities in these cases, and it is taken because the law acknowledges that driving is not a right, but a privilege (Pollack  434).  This may be the most critical point ignored by opponents to such a law.  It is, in plain terms, untenable.  As people must be tested to earn the privilege to drive to begin with, there is no inherent “right” in place.

This is further emphasized by noting other cases wherein people voluntarily “surrender rights” in other regards, as the law evolves to protect the safety of others.  Most states, for example, prohibit cigarette smoking in public buildings and restaurants because secondhand smoke is seen as posing a general health risk.  This very personal “right to smoke” a legal substance, then, is denied, yet the laws meet with virtually no resistance.  It is consequently all the more difficult to comprehend why a law in place to prevent immediate death and injury is debated.

Objections possibly arising from inconvenience and/or difficulty of use are also easily refuted.  As some states like Massachusetts and Connecticut are already mandating interlock breathalyzers for drivers with prior DUI convictions, more information is made available to the public as to their usage, just as the technology advances.  The interlock device resembles a small cell phone, is virtually impossible to override, and the entire process of testing and then starting the vehicles is a matter of several seconds (IIDM).  The process is no more taxing than adjusting mirrors.

Virtually every objection to mandatory interlock devices relying on breathalyzers fails to stand up to the most basic scrutiny.  Injuries and deaths occur all the time from drunk driving, and measures so far enacted have failed to end these avoidable tragedies.  The actual process of testing is quick, easy, and reliable, and it in no way violates liberties so essential to the nation’s ideology or government.  The ignition-interlock breathalyzer is not, in fact, an idea whose time has come; rather, it is a device whose time is long past, and responsible citizens everywhere are obligated to support its being mandatory.

Works Cited

Bounds, Laura, Darnell, Gayden S., Shea, Kirstin Brekken, & Agnor, DottieDee. Health and     Fitness: A Guide to a Healthy Lifestyle.  Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing, Print. 2003.

Ignition Interlock  Devices in MA (IIDM).   About Ignition Interlock Device in Massachusetts. Web,    2011. Retrieved from http://www.ignitioninterlockingdevice.com/about.htm

Mother Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Statistics. Web, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.madd.org/statistics/

Pollack, Jocelyn M.  Criminal Law. New York: Elsevier, 2009. Print.