treatment, making it very difficult for an officer to determine if they are violating those restrictions as long as they are driving around town. Is this really a suspension? SLED provided us with data indicating that 42% of people arrested for DUI in South Carolina in 2019 refused to blow into the Datamaster machine. This is up from 38% in 2013. The latest, but dated, information our organization has is that the national refusal rate was 20% in 2011. While perhaps it should not be the case, lack of BAC data does harm the prosecution’s chances for a conviction. Other evidence should be sufficient for a judge or jury, but the reality is that BAC data is often the most convincing piece of evidence. To make matters worse, we heard consistent comments from local officers and prosecutors that “double refusals,” refusals to give a breath test and refusal to participate in Standardized Field Sobriety Tests on the side of the road, are on the increase. This means even less total evidence. If someone’s refusing to provide a sample benefits them, they should at least face “real” penalties for refusing. If there is not already enough incentive to refuse, those who refuse and then are found guilty are given the penalties equivalent to having a BAC between .08 and .10—the lowest of all possible penalty categories. If someone were designing a system that encouraged people to refuse providing the evidence they pledged they would, it would look much like South Carolina’s system. In addition to reconsidering the wisdom of rewarding those who refuse with the lowest penalties, MADD proposes coupling the TAL with the Ignition Interlock Device program that already exists for repeat offenders and first-time offenders with a BAC over .15. Installing these “in-car breathalyzers” protects the public as research is very clear that interlocks save lives. Would those who are arrested and refuse still be driving under this approach? They would, and MADD is fine with that scenario because they would be driving with a device that blocks bad decision making. It’s also worth adding that 50%- 75% of those who have their license suspended for DUI continue to drive, so that approach is not effective either. In 2019, Senate Bill 18 was filed that would have required ignition interlocks for a) anyone convicted of drunk driving regardless of BAC or number of offenses and b) those wanting to apply for a TAL. Despite passing the Senate by a 40-1 vote in March 2019, the House did not take up the bill in the Judiciary Subcommittee until March 2020. Ultimately, it never passed out of the Judiciary Committee, and the two-year legislative session ended, killing the bill. This bill would have truly been a life-saving measure that would also have meant that refusing to give a breath or blood sample would actually have affected someone negatively (cost and inconvenience) and may have caused them to reconsider the choice of refusing to blow. This reform has been refiled for the 2021 legislative year—Senate Bill 28 and House Bill 3008. We can no longer accept the refusal to change.
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