“Interlock Bill” Now Focuses On Blood Alcohol Content

State lawmakers made changes Tuesday to a proposal that requires Tennesseans convicted of drunk driving to install an interlock device on their car.

The interlock is an alcohol detector connected to a car’s ignition. A driver must blow into the detector in order to start the car.

Cookeville Democrat Henry Fincher says he now wants interlocks required for anyone convicted of having a blood alcohol content of .08 percent or more. Fincher says using the alcohol level as a basis will help cut down on what he calls “repeat first offenders.”

“There are a lot of people who have been caught, arrested, jailed, multiple times for DUI that are still pleading guilty to “first offense.”

Fincher says his measure has also been changed to raise $2 million. It would charge offenders monthly fees to have the interlocks. Some of that money would be used to pay to install the devices for convicted drivers who couldn’t afford interlocks.

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The key to the amended bill, Fincher says, is making the “trigger” the blood alcohol content of .08 percent, the legal level of drunken driving conviction almost everywhere in the country. Previous interlock laws have been applied to second offense, and offenders have plea-bargained down from those offenses.

Fincher says making the trigger simply 0.08 percent BAC, the distinction between “first” and “second” offense won’t exist, at least for Interlock purposes.

In addition, the bill raises money.

“The offender will pay approximately $50 a month, in addition to any other fines or penalties that he or she has had, for having the interlock, and that will go into a fund.”

That fund will pay for indigents to use the device, he says. But the new law would also bring in other revenues.

“There’s a tax levied on the interlock companies and the trans-dermal alcohol monitor companies, the bracelet.”

He says or offenders who don’t use the breathalyzer interlock, a clamp-on bracelet that tests the ongoing blood alcohol content of one’s body is available. Fincher says that is even more cumbersome and invasive.

The bill is HB 2917 Fincher/SB 2897 McNally.

Tennessee Highway Patrol Trooper Josh Brown reports that as of January 2010 there are 2,743 driver’s license holders with an interlock restriction. Brown say cross-checking with companies providing interlocks shows only 580 drivers currently are driving with the devices.

That means only about 21 percent of drivers who are supposed to be using the devices actually had them installed.

Fincher says his bill includes fines for persons who are supposed to use the devices but are caught driving without them.

Jacqueline Fellows contributed to this story.

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