By Paul Foy, Associated Press Writer
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Taking just one drink could bring a drunken-driving charge for drivers with children in their car under a measure introduced Tuesday by a Utah legislator.
Rep. Dana Love, R-Syracuse, also wants to authorize police to swab fluids from the mouths of impaired drivers for drug testing, a more convenient method than testing blood, which can be drawn only at clinics.
Love was flanked by four Utah Highway Patrol officers and anti-alcohol crusader Dr. George Van Komen at a news conference in the House lounge to promote a package of two DUI bills and one resolution.
The resolution would encourage Utah police to do more blood testing on drivers they suspect are impaired.
Drivers can refuse all tests, but could lose the driver’s license for 18 months.
Love would toughen that penalty by letting police take the vehicle registration and license plates of repeat DUI offenders who refuse tests.
The offender could keep and sell the car, buying a new one that could be registered, she said.
Love said she would have proposed vehicle forfeiture if Utah voters in 2000 hadn’t taken much of the incentive out of police seizures. The ballot initiative requires that every dime of revenue from criminals’ seized assets go to the state school fund instead of police agencies and added new layers of due process for seizures.
Love’s toughest bill would make Utah the first state to lower the blood-alcohol limit to 0.02 for drivers with one or more children in their cars. That’s a major change from the 0.08 limit for all drivers.
For women especially, 0.02 could be reached after just one glass of wine or beer, said Komen, who is opposed to alcohol consumption in any setting.
Men who aren’t eating when they drink also could hit that limit, he said.
“There’s no safe level for drinking and driving,” said Love, who deplored drinking by parents who take the wheel with children in the car.
She asserted that drivers with blood-alcohol contents of as little as 0.03 -- the “euphoria stage,” she called it -- are impaired and shouldn’t be driving. That’s why her proposal sets the limit at 0.02.
Utah Highway Patrol Col. Scott Duncan endorsed it as a “giant leap forward” in combatting drunken driving.
Troopers are seeing more impaired drivers with children in the car, but the state collects no statistics to put a number on the problem, he said.
Love is still drafting her bills and didn’t produce copies, and Duncan wasn’t certain how they would fit into roadside procedures.
Duncan said he believed the measures would allow police to demand breath, fluid or blood tests if they smell any alcohol on a driver who has children in a car, skipping the field sobriety test.