Last month, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) released a report ranking the efforts of all 50 states to stop the deadly epidemic of drunk driving. This annual Report to the Nation is the most recent release from MADD’s Campaign to Eliminate Drunk Driving.
While this report highlighted many legislative accomplishments and various drunk driving reforms, it also identified a wide variety of shortcomings in several states. In fact, only 12 states received a perfect score of five stars in the MADD report – and Connecticut was not among them.
So how did Connecticut do?
MADD’s five-star system is based on a review of five distinct laws and legal countermeasures that can be used to eliminate drunk driving accidents. For every criteria/law a state fulfills, it gets a star. These criteria include:
- Ignition interlock laws
- License revocation for drunk driving
- Child endangerment laws for drunk driving with children in the car
- Sobriety checkpoints
- “No-refusal events”, such as streamlining the process of obtaining warrants for blood testing when drivers refuse testing themselves
Unfortunately, Connecticut did not score well when it came to these five criteria – receiving an overall score of only three stars. While the report noted some improvements for Connecticut, such as better ignition interlock laws, it also pointed out the lack of drunk driving child endangerment laws in the state.
However, this much is clear: Connecticut lawmakers have their work cut out for them if they want to improve their rankings in next year’s report.
