You may love your children more than anything in the world. You may treat them well, keeping them out of harm and never laying a hand on them. But if you let them ride in a car that you’re driving drunk, you’re a child abuser.
So says, most recently, the Las Cruces Police. A man from Hatch, New Mexico was driving in Las Cruces recently when, according to reports the police received, he swerved across a couple of lanes on Solano Drive. When he was stopped, the police found several cans of beer, an odor of alcohol – and two boys, aged 8 and 10.
Once the failed the breathalyzer test, he was charged with two counts of child abuse as well as aggravated DWI.
Unlike most states, New Mexico does not have a specific child endangerment law which raises the penalties if a drunk driver has minors in the vehicle. However, drivers can be charged with child abuse, which is a third degree felony in New Mexico, carrying a 3-year prison sentence and fines of up to $5,000. And that is just for a first offense.
The need for such laws is understandable: as bad as drunk driving is, it’s worse when adults betray the trust that children place in them by endangering them.
Here, though, is another way to look at it: all drunk driving can be child endangerment. Impaired drivers don’t just risk their own lives or those of their passengers. They’re also placing at risk other drivers, other passengers, and pedestrians. Those can include children, and sadly, they often have.
All DWI laws exist for the protection of innocents. The most vulnerable of us need the extra protection afforded by child endangerment and child abuse laws. For that reason, road safety advocates have for many years pressed for stronger measures for those who put young lives at risk.
What’s the cause of drunk driving? You could say it’s alcohol, because you can’t drive drunk without it. However, if that’s true, you could also say that vehicles are the cause, because you need those too. In fact, impaired driving – particularly repeat drunk driving – is a complex problem requiring a varied set of solutions.
Sobriety checkpoints – roadblocks at which police stop cars and ask drivers if they’ve been drinking – are controversial. Most states at least permit them, and many use them as an efficient means of catching drunk drivers before they do harm.
Maybe you read about a winner of the Miss Washington pageant who had to give up her crown in 2016 because she was arrested for DUI after she was 
DUI patrol is not an easy job. It was particularly hard for some Leon County officers who responded to a call after a crash in Tallahassee. It appears an SUV had run a car off the road. The SUV’s driver was unable to focus or speak.
It began in California with something called the Farr-Davis Safety Act of 1986. That law required DUI offenders in four counties to use a new device called an ignition interlock, which used breathalyzer technology to prevent a car from starting if the driver has been drinking. The devices worked well, and some public safety advocates wanted them for all offenders, not just repeat drunk drivers. In 2005 New Mexico became the first state to require all DUI offenders to use interlocks. Louisiana and Arizona followed, with good results: it was found that mandating the devices for all offenders reduced alcohol-related road deaths by a significant amount – in New Mexico’s case over 30 percent.
Time flies. The question some are asking is if it’s flown too fast for Ethan Couch, the notorious “affluenza teen” who, at the age of 16, killed four people in a drunk driving crash he caused in Fort Worth, Texas.
A millionaire who is now in prison for DUI manslaughter recently tried to challenge Florida’s methods of collecting and testing blood for alcohol levels. It did not go well for him.