According to the San Mateo County Times, Sean Quintero, a 19-year-old resident of San Francisco who had been drinking and partying on that fatal night, was involved in a serious car accident that killed one of the passengers in his car.

Sources indicate that the teenager was driving along Highway 101 towards the southern part of San Francisco with a blood alcohol content of .16, which is twice the legal limit of .08 for adults over the age of 21.

Apparently, Quintero was driving home from a party and loudly discussing music with the four passengers in his car when he failed to notice that traffic ahead had come to a stop. The traffic had stopped because of an unrelated car collision minutes before the Quintero accident.

Tragically, Quintero noticed the stopped cars too late, and rammed his Toyota, which was his mother’s car, into the back of another vehicle.

When the accident occurred, Quintero’s friend, 17-year-old Margaret Qaqish was pressed against her seatbelt and suffered severe internal injuries. The force of the accident was so powerful that she suffered fatal damage to her internal organs.

Qaqish, who was a senior at a San Francisco high school, had been sitting in the rear middle seat of the car, so she may have also struck the back of another seat or another person. Fortunately, though, the other three passengers in the car were not seriously injured.

The accident occurred around 3:20 a.m. and all the occupants of the car had allegedly been drinking that night. Quintero, to his credit, has expressed serious remorse for the tragic accident, according to his DUI attorney.

Quintero has accepted responsibility for his actions, as he recently pleaded no contest to charges of drunk driving and causing a crash with a fatality.

The felony charges could put Quintero in prison for up to four years and four months, though his sentence will not be determined by a local judge until this January. Until then, Quintero will have to await news of his fate.

In addition to the possible prison sentence, the teenager could also face severe financial penalties. He is currently being held in jail on a 325,000 bond.

Historically, young males have disproportionately higher rates of drunk driving accidents. And DUI accidents tend to be more dangerous as the drivers grow younger and more intoxicated.

For teenagers who are out drinking and do not want to alarm their parents, there are still plenty of ways to get home without endangering friends or other drivers.

For example, public transportation, including buses or trains, and taxis offer safe, reliable ways to get home.

While this law seemed to be misguided to many observers, it did come with a key caveat: those carrying handguns could not drink alcohol while they were packing heat.

This important distinction, however, recently came into play when Todd himself was arrested for a DUI while he was carrying a loaded weapon.

According to an Associated Press report, police stopped Todd in his GMC Envoy and detected a strong odor of alcohol in his vehicle. Police said that Todd had bloodshot eyes and had difficulty speaking.

Todd refused to take a breathalyzer test, but he allegedly failed a roadside sobriety test administered by the arresting officers. The police report says that Todd claimed he only had two drinks before being arrested.

After his arrest, police search Todd’s car and discovered a loaded .38-caliber pistol in a holster resting between the driver’s seat and the center console of the car.

The discovery of the handgun was particularly troubling to the arresting officers, who said Todd was unable to stay on his feet and was “obviously very impaired and not in any condition to be carrying a loaded handgun.”

Predictably, critics of Todd’s handgun law have embraced the irony of his arrest. They have also claimed that Todd’s actions show the futility and inevitable danger of allowing bar patrons to carry handguns.

In his defense, Todd released a statement claiming that he was sorry for the incident, but he also refused to make any further public comments on the advice of his DUI lawyer.

Some observers are speculating that Todd’s days as a lawmaker are numbered, but Todd has shown no signs of leaving his legislative post.

He has, however, entertained the notion of stepping aside from his post as the chairman of the Tennessee legislature’s State and Local Governance Committee. Todd plans to announce his future intentions after meeting with the Republican leaders of the state legislature.

In addition to his sponsorship of the controversial handgun law, Todd gained national fame last year for fearing that illegal immigrants would “go out there like rats and multiply” if undocumented women were given publicly financed prenatal care for their children.

After the remark, Todd compounded the public’s anger by saying that, instead of the quip about rats, he simply meant to use the term “anchor babies,” which many see as an equally indelicate phrase.

Later, Todd would renounce both claims, and issued a formal public apology. Thus, while Todd’s lawmaking days may be short-lived, he at least has gained valuable practice in the art of the formal public apology.

Under legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown this week, police officers in California will no longer be able to impound cars from sober but unlicensed motorists who are stopped at drunk driving checkpoints.

While this seems like a logical decision, and a victory for sober drivers, one key constituency has the most to gain from the new law.

Apparently, police in California have been using drunk driving checkpoints as a cover in an effort to catch illegal immigrants, rather than people driving under the influence of alcohol.

Previously, California had a law which allowed police to impound cars that belonged to unlicensed drivers for up to 30 days.

After 30 days, however, the accrued impoundment fees can reach thousands of dollars. The high level of fees often caused the car to be worth less than the driver owed to the police, leading many drivers to simply relinquish the car.

Because of these extraordinary police powers, illegal immigrants who were unfairly targeted at drunk driving checkpoints often lost their vehicles, even if they were perfectly sober when they were driving.

These questionable police tactics raised the concern of Latino legislators in California, who joined together to pass the latest bill in the state legislature.

Under the new law, which was written by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, a Democrat from Los Angeles, sober drivers who are caught at DUI checkpoints without a driver’s license do not immediately lose their car.

Instead, law enforcement officials are now required to release the car to a licensed driver representing the owner of the car.

In situations where a licensed driver cannot be found immediately after the driver is stopped at a checkpoint, police may take the car to an impoundment lot. However, the police must release the vehicle to a licensed driver whenever one appears.

It is Cedillo’s hope that the new California DUI law will prevent police from unfairly targeting illegal immigrants for driving without licenses at checkpoints that are allegedly designed to stop drunk drivers.

It should be noted, of course, that the law does nothing to limit the power of police to stop drunk drivers.

In fact, by eliminating the distraction of targeting illegal immigrants, the bill may also have the side benefit of funneling more police resources to targeting drunk driving, as police spend less time worrying about immigrants who are driving without licenses.

According to NJ.com, the legislation was prompted by a fatal one-car crash in Southampton, New Jersey in July 2007. Anthony Farrace, a passenger in the car, was killed when it hit a tree, and his body was tested for drugs and alcohol like in any autopsy.

The seventeen-year-old driver, however, was not required to submit to testing and was cited for careless driving and received a $200 fine and her license was suspended for six months. The accident incited Farrace’s father to push for a change in the New Jersey DUI laws.

Currently, drivers can only be tested when there is evidence or a strong suspicion that the driver is under the influence.

The new DUI law would require drivers to submit to a breath test or a blood test. If drivers refused to submit, then they would be subject to the same penalties as drivers who refused to submit in a DUI stop. First offenders could face fines of up to $1,000 and have their licenses suspended for up to two years.

A similar law is currently being considered in Illinois.

According to the New Jersey News Room, the bill is being sponsored by Democrats Nelson Albano and Paul Moriarty. Albano believes that the bill “makes common sense,” and that police would be able to “determine whether a driver was under the influence, and would be able to insure that impaired drivers don’t get back behind the wheel and will face serious charges.”

Moriarty is quoted as saying that “ testing for potential alcohol or drug use should be the rule when accidents result in death or serious injury, not the exception.”

The opposite side, of course, is that this is a bad road to head down. Landline, a magazine for truckers, points out that this expansion of implied consent laws and repudiation of probable cause is troubling, and would open the state to numerous headaches down the road because it is so invasive.

However, the article also notes that this is the second bill, and an identical effort died a year ago in committee.

This time around though, things look like they’re going differently. The New Jersey Assembly’s Law and Public Safety committee approved the measure in June, and forwarded it to the full Assembly in June, but a date for a final vote has yet to be decided.

What do you think? Is this an appropriate measure that will protect citizens and should be more widely adopted? Or is it an invasion of privacy which New Jersey should avoid putting into law?

An ignition interlock device keeps a car from starting until the driver proves, via a breath test, that he or she does not have any alcohol in their system. The new law in the state is Leandra’s Law, named for a young girl who was killed in 2009 by a drunk driver. Her father, Lenny Rosado, became an outspoken advocate of tougher DUI laws after he lost his daughter.

The law will also make it a felony to drive drunk with a child under the age of 16 in the car.

Those required to install the ignition interlock device will have to keep it installed for a minimum of six months. The device must be installed at the driver’s expense. They are leased to drivers for a monthly charge of $70-110, according to the Office of Probation and Correctional Alternatives. Installation of the devices can be free, or can range in cost to up to $100.

According to the director of the OPCA, Robert Maccarone, an average of 25,000 drunk driving convictions come down every year in New York State – 4,000 of which occur in New York City.

The ignition interlock devices, which must be purchased from one of several state-contracted manufacturers, have a very low tolerance for alcohol levels in the breath of drivers. A car with the device won’t start if it registers anything that is above a .025 percent blood alcohol content. The legal limit is .08 percent.

There are a number of ways to deter falsified tests, as well. To keep a sober accomplice from blowing into the device, they have rolling retests, which administer another test every 5 to 15 minutes. This means that, to cheat the device again, the drunk driver would need to have the same sober friend with them.

When a retest fails, the horn starts to beep, and then a loud noise is admitted from the ignition interlock device.

There are also devices that snap a photo of the driver at the time the test is administered. Devices can also be configured to limit the hours a driver can drive the car, and they can resist hot-wiring and push-starting.

Denna Cohen, the president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Long Island chapter, says that the new law going into effect will save lives. “This is absolutely effective,” she said. “One drunk driver is all it takes to wreak havoc on a family.”

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety agrees that the devices are effective. “We know that alcohol interlocks do work to reduce recidivism, and strengthening interlocks to include first offenders is the logical step to curb alcohol-impaired driving,” said Russ Rader, a spokesperson for the group.

Maccarone said that, in New Mexico, a similar program reducing repeat DUI offenses by 37 percent between 2002 and 2008.

The new DUI laws will kick in on August 1, according to an article in The Waterloo Region-Record.

Under the new laws, drivers under the age of 22 won’t be able to drink a drop of alcohol, or take a single sip, before they drive a car.

The announcement came down from Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne. Drivers under 21 won’t be allowed to have any alcohol in their blood while they are driving, regardless of what type of driver’s license they have.

Canada has a graduated series of licenses leading up to the G license, which allows drivers to operate any car, van or small truck and trailer up to a certain size. The G1 license allows a driver to drive in the presence of a fully licensed driver who has at least four years of driving experience.

A G2 license allows a driver to drive without accompaniment, but it comes with other restrictions on the number of passengers and the time of night they can carry passengers.

Even before the new legislation goes into effect, G1 and G2 drivers were not allowed to have any alcohol in their system when they are behind the wheel. With the new laws, only G license holders who are over the age of 21 are allowed to have alcohol in their system that does not exceed the legal blood-alcohol limit of .05 percent.

The legislation is only now taking effect, after having been passed back in 2009.

There was dispute surrounding the legislation, and lawmakers removed a provision that would have limited the number of passengers that a teenage driver could have in the car.

Drivers who are caught violating the new law will have their license immediately suspended for 24 hours, and they will face a future suspension and a possible fine of up to $500 Canadian dollars.

Emna Dhahak, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Transportation, told The Waterloo Region-Record that the legislation is “based on sound research and analysis.”

16-year-old Easton Page agreed with the law. “Mixing alcohol and young drivers doesn’t usually work out,” he said. “If you’re going to be behind the wheel you need to be completely in the right mind and focus on what you’re doing. You can’t have that taken away from you.”

Another young person felt that the law may single out young people. “I think that it’s a really good idea for people who are just learning to drive,” said Meghan Garber. “But I think it’s unfair how they target the younger people.”

Andy Murie, who is CEO of MADD Canada, offered that skeptics should check the numbers.

Those aged 16 to 24 represent 13 percent of the Canadian population, but account for 33 percent of DUI deaths. “They don’t just kill themselves,” said Murie. “They kill passengers, their friends, and they kill innocent people. They don’t get to choose when this is their performance.”

Accord to the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, the peak ages for DUI collisions are between 19 and 21.

The situations are somewhat exceptional, dealing with those arrested for DUI multiple times within a very short period of time. In these so-called DUI clusters, one case might still be left open and without a conviction entered on the record when another DUI arrest occurs with the same person.

Because of constitutional presumption of an innocence, a person may be facing two charges of a first DUI at the same time, and not have to deal with the escalated consequences of multiple offenses.

Take the case of 53-year-old Barbara Van Ekeren. She was arrested for DUI for the first time on May 1, 2009. She pled guilty, and was given a suspended imposition of sentence that July. Her file remained open, and the conviction did not appear on her record.

She got arrested for DUI again soon after that, in November. She was charged with first offense DUI for that arrest as well. Then, in February, she was arrested again. She was able to plead guilty to second offense DUI for both of these arrests, rather than pleading guilty to third offense DUI.

She served 15 days in jail, as per the judge’s order, for these second offense pleas. The loophole occurred because the DUI arrests were so close together. These clustered DUIs enable some of the worst DUI offenders to avoid felony convictions.

According to the president of the local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Lila Doud, Van Ekeren is getting a freebie for one of the DUIs by avoiding the third offense conviction. She has publically voiced her frustration about the law, and told the Rapid City Journal that this sort of freebie DUI situation occurs frequently.

Doud blames the law’s systematic treatment of DUI for their ability to leave with the lesser sentence in the cases.

“When they’re not sentenced on their first one and end up getting the second, they’ve got a freebie,” she said.

According to prosecutors, they are limited by the constitutional presumption of innocence. MADD officials as well as state leaders agree that there should be something done to be tougher on these repeat offenders, but that it’s not a simple fix. The legal system’s methodical nature make change slow to come and difficult to finalize.

Currently causing the loophole is the law that DUI offenses can’t be escalated to the next level until the defendant has pleaded guilty or has been found guilty, the Pennington County State’s Attorney Glenn Brenner said. “But in order to get a third offense, you have to have two prior convictions and in order to get a fourth offense, it’s not good enough to have three prior convictions. You have to have a third offense felony DUI before you can enhance to a fourth offense.”

At the root of the issue is the presumption of innocence. Cases can’t be escalated without a conviction, and these can take months, even while repeat offenders with alcohol addictions pile up DUI arrests.

“We need to get them through the system faster,” said Doud.

South Dakota extensively combats DUI with billboard campaigns and police presence, and Rapid City police chief Steve Allender believes that there are fewer drunk drivers on the road now. “Every day and night, we are looking for the drunk driver,” he said.

Wisconsin leads the nation in binge drinking and drunk driving crashes, according to numbers cited in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

But a new push has led to a new series of DUI laws that take effect on July 1, 2010. The new laws include stiffer penalties for drunk drivers found with young passengers, a high blood alcohol content and multiple offenses on record.

The new Wisconsin DUI laws include additional penalties for the following offenses:

• First DUI Offense: A person convicted of a first or second DUI offense who has a passenger under the age of sixteen in the car faces a fine of $350-$1100 or jail time ranging from five days to six months. If a first time offender DUI offender has a blood alcohol level of greater than 0.15 then an interlock ignition device will be installed.
• Third DUI Offense: A person convicted of a third DUI offense will receive at least 45 days in prison. The sentence used to be 30 days.
• Fourth DUI Offense: If an offender is convicted a fourth time within five years, it will be considered a felony. There will also be a fine will between $600 and $10,000, and possible jail time will range between six months to six years.
• Seventh, Eighth, or Ninth Offense: A person convicted of this many DUIs will serve at least three years in jail for each offense.
• Tenth Offense: A person committing a tenth offense would receive at least four years of jail time.
• Repeat DUI offenders: Repeat DUI offenders convicted of DUI causing injury would receive up to six years in jail or would be required to pay up to $2,000 in fines. This punishment would be doubled if there was a minor in the car at the time of the offense.
• Offenders with a lower BAC will face the same penalties: Under the old regulations, offenders with a blood alcohol level below .10 but still above the legal limit were subject to lighter penalties, but that is no longer the case.

The bill is expected to cost Wisconsin an extra $12.8 million per year, largely due to the costs required to house inmates. This cost is expected to be offset by the introduction of higher fees to reinstate revoked or suspended licenses, as well as by a program that would allow judges to decrease jail time in return for offenders completing a drug or alcohol abuse course.

Supporters of the bill say that this will not only drive the cost of the bill down, but decrease the rate of repeat offenders, saving Wisconsin money in the long-term.

Polls indicate that the Wisconsin public is firmly behind the change in the drunk driving laws.

Wisconsin Public Radio and St. Norbert College conducted a survey of 400 people, 85 percent of whom support the bill. Fifty-five percent also support using a higher liquor tax to help finance the bill, though that idea was struck down by Wisconsin Assembly Democrats before the bill was passed.

The proposed DUI laws would allow police to quickly suspend and fine drivers whose BAC level is as low as 0.05, according to the Vancouver Sun.

Billed as the toughest drunk driving law in Canada, the new law is designed to change the behavior of drivers in a dramatic fashion.

“We believe we need penalties that are clear, swift and sever,” said Solicitor-General Mike de Jong.

According to de Jong, the problem of drunk driving in British Columbia is on the rise. He cited the need to prevent others from putting people’s lives at risk.

“I hope that drivers will consider the seriousness of these sanctions while they’re sober, before they go out.”

The new law would, if enacted, enables an immediate three-day driving ban for drivers found to have a blood-alcohol level between 0.05 and 0.08, which the article called the “warn range.”

The offense could also lead to vehicles being impounded and fines and fees up to $600.

If a driver was caught in this blood-alcohol level range multiple times, they could face a ban of up to 30 days and $800 in fees and fines.

Currently in British Columbia, police issue a 24-hour suspension for those with a blood-alcohol level in that range.

The new law would also be tougher on those found driving with a BAC level above the 0.08. There would be an immediate 90-day driving ban and $3,750 in fees and fines. The DUI offender would also have to use an ignition interlock device for one year.

“Under the new laws, drinking drivers will spend more money, more time, more effort earning back their driving privileges,” said de Jong.

De Jong made a speech about the bill on the legislature steps, invoking the memory of four-year-old Alexa Middelaer, who was killed in 2008 by an allegedly impaired driver as she fed horses in a field just off the road.

Canadian Premier Gordon Campbell himself stressed the importance of stronger laws. He was arrested for DUI while on vacation in Hawaii in 2003.

“The lesson that I learned … is that you should not be drinking and driving, period,” he said. “I think it’s important for us to do everything we can to make our streets as safe as possible for people.”

The bill is commonly known as Jack Shea’s law after the Olympic medalist in the skeleton who was killed by a drunk driver in 2002. It has moved through the New York Senate, and now it must pass the assembly to go into effect.

Senator Charles Fuschillo, a supporter of the legislation, told the Legislative Gazette he was confident it would pass the assembly.

The new legislation revolves around Section 1194 of the state’s Vehicle and Traffic Law. This section defines who is allowed and qualified to take a blood sample at the scene of an accident from a person suspected of drunk driving.

In 2002, the driver who killed Jack Shea was able to avoid charges because of a loophole in this section. The argument that got him out of prosecution was that a physician had to directly supervise the drawing of blood samples.

In the Shea case, a police officer had requested that an emergency medical technician take the blood sample without a doctor present. Instead, a registered nurse and physician’s assistant oversaw the drawing of blood.

The blood sample had shown the driver to have a .15 blood-alcohol level at the time of the blood test.
Based on this loophole, however, the court had to dismiss the case, even in appeal.

The new legislation would take away the need for a doctor to be on the scene, and it would broaden the options for those with the authority to draw blood to nurse practitioners, licensed practical nurses and other professionals with a license to draw blood in New York.

When time is essential in many DUI cases, the ability of emergency first responders to draw blood could mean the difference in some situations. As it stands now, the law could discount blood drawn by EMTs and tested for blood-alcohol content.

Also, often in rural parts of the state, a doctor is not available to oversee blood drawing within a sufficient time period.

“This is another measure to strengthen provisions to get DWI drivers prosecuted,” said Fuschillo. He has been working on the bill since 2006.