The holidays can be happy, but they can also be a dangerous. Safe driving advocates are renewing their campaigns to separate drinking from driving.
Janice HeggieMargolis is the executive director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving in Connecticut. In the hope of saving lives, here's what she wants holiday revelers to do. "We are asking people to designate a non-drinking driver," she said. "Especially now, as I said, when the holidays are some of the most dangerous time on our roads."
Using the latest available data from 2012, Heggie Margolis said that Connecticut's alcohol-related motor vehicle fatalities went down at a time when national rates were going up. Long-term, the numbers look even better. "We know that, in 2012, 85 people were killed in alcohol related crashes," she said. "If you consider that in 1984, when MADD was started in Connecticut, 252 people were killed that year in alcohol-related crashes, we've come a long way."
If the prospect of saving lives isn't enough to stop drinking and driving, HeggieMargolis is hoping new penalties will. As of July 2015, all first-time DUI offenders will have to have an ignition interlock system installed in their cars. They'll have to blow into a device to turn the car on. Any appreciable alcohol in the breath will mean the car won't start.
