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In May, a 34-year-old Haverford man was arrested for the fourth time for drunken driving after he allegedly struck another vehicle with his pickup truck in Upper Darby and then fled.

When a police officer managed to stop the truck, the driver exited and was barely able to stand up, according to Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood. The driver failed field sobriety tests.

According to court records, the driver has had three previous drunken-driving convictions dating back to 1998. However, he is by no means the first repeat DUI offender in Delaware County.

A 50-year-old Upper Darby man was facing his 9th and 10th DUI arrests and a 39-year-old Ridley man was arrested for the ninth time for driving under the influence of alcohol in 2003, the year that Pennsylvania legislators lowered the legal limit of alcohol from 0.10 to 0.08 for drivers.

Since Sept. 30, 2003, drivers who have received a second or subsequent DUI violation are required to install ignition interlocks and keep them in place for a year.

Like a breathalyzer, the ignition interlock device, installed on the vehicle dashboard, measures alcohol concentration when the driver breathes into it. If the measurement exceeds the programmed blood alcohol concentration, the device prevents the engine from starting.

In order to stop someone other than the driver from providing a breath sample, the device requires breath samples randomly after the engine has started. If the sample is not provided or fails, an alarm is triggered and the ignition is turned off.

In 2006, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, also known as MADD, launched its Campaign to Eliminate Drunk Driving and the number of states requiring all-offender ignition interlocks has grown from one to 25.

Statewide, alcohol-related crashes increased in 2012 to 11,956 from 11,805 in 2011, and deaths due to drunken driving decreased from 428 in 2011 to 404 in 2012 according to the Pennsylvania DUI Association.

More than two million drunken drivers with three or more prior convictions are on U.S. roads and three out of four with suspended licenses continue to drive, according to MADD. Nearly 10,000 Americans are killed and 350,000 are injured each year because of drunken driving. Many of those injuries, one of which occurs every 90 seconds in the U.S., are life-altering.

Officials from MADD claim drunken-driving deaths have decreased 24 percent in the last eight years due to improved DUI laws including all-offender interlock requirements. They say drunken-driving deaths in Oregon, Arizona, Louisiana and New Mexico have dropped by more than 30 percent due to the passage of all-offender interlock laws.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention credit ignition interlocks with reducing repeat offenses by drunken drivers by two-thirds. Four states have passed all-offender interlock legislation, eight states have improved legislation by closing loopholes and four states are still considering the passage of stricter DUI laws just in the last seven months.

In the neighboring state of Delaware, legislation passed on June 30 requiring all convicted drunken drivers to obtain ignition interlocks.

In Pennsylvania, state Sen. John Rafferty Jr., R-44th of Collegeville, has proposed Senate Bill 1036 which would require all repeat and first-time offenders with blood alcohol concentrations of 0.10 or greater to install ignition interlocks. We urge state legislators to seriously consider this bill in the fall.

While the ideal would be for anyone who has had a drink not to get behind the wheel, having a device to prevent a drunken driver from starting the car could prevent the injuries or deaths of hundreds of Pennsylvanians each year.

-Daily Local News of West Chester.

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