Arizona’s DUI laws are harsh.
Too harsh, according to a veteran state lawmaker responsible for making DUI law even tougher.
“Every year it was a race to make it more punitive,” state Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said of anti-DUI legislation over the years. “At some point, it becomes overly punitive.”
Yet he's helped make them tougher, including with a successful bill he sponsored this year targeting rideshare and taxicab drivers. And Mothers Against Drunk Driving has indicated it will bring legislation next year that would lower the legal limit for blood alcohol content.
The state’s DUI laws are something Arizonans should consider if they’re planning to imbibe during the July 4th holiday weekend.
What happens if I get a DUI in Arizona?
Convicted first-time offenders usually get a mandatory 24 hours in jail, driving privileges suspended for six months or longer for people under age 21, and an interlock device installed in their vehicle for six months to a year. More jail time awaits those who blow off mandatory drug or alcohol screenings and treatment.
The total price tag often comes to $3,500 or more, not including lawyers’ fees, which can become a crushing, multi-year debt to pay off for many people.
That’s for a standard DUI in which the driver's driver's blood alcohol content is between the legal limit of 0.08% and 0.15%.
First-offenders convicted of extreme DUIs, where the driver's blood alcohol content is between 0.15% and 0.20%, typically receive jail sentences of nine or 15 days, respectively.
Drivers charged with aggravated DUI, which tacks on penalties for circ*mstances surrounding drunk driving, may spend a substantial amount of time behind bars. Having a child under 15 in the vehicle means 10 to 30 days in jail, depending on the BAC level. If the state took a driver's license away because of a previous DUI and they get caught driving drunk again, or if it's the driver's third DUI in seven years, the law mandates four months of hard time in prison, not jail.
Yet Kavanagh, a former police officer for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is skeptical Arizona’s DUI laws stop people from getting behind the wheel while impaired.
“They don’t deter alcoholics or people who don’t give a damn,” he said.
He doesn’t like how the sentence for first-time DUI offenders must include a mandatory 24 hours in jail and up to a year of driving with an interlock device installed in their cars, even if their DUI wasn’t “extreme,” he said. Those provisions should be repealed, he added.
Despite his cynical take on the law, Kavanagh sponsored a bill this year making drivers of cabs or rideshare vehicles guilty of a DUI if they have a blood alcohol percentage of 0.04 or more, same as commercial vehicle drivers. The bill passed the state House and Senate on nearly unanimous, bipartisan votes and signed by Gov. Katie Hobbs. It goes into effect with other legislation this year on September 14.
'24 hours in jail is sobering to anybody'
Some citizens find the jail requirements “extremely harsh” and humiliating, but a jail sentence serves as a social equalizer, said Jesse Torrez, director of the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety.
“There are people who have money that can afford $3,500 – it won’t cripple them,” Torrez said. “But 24 hours in jail is sobering to anybody, especially somebody of means … It’s not a good place to be.”
For someone on the low-income scale, the cost of a DUI may spur years-long financial havoc, he said. Besides the fines and fees, loss of driving privileges could lead to employment problems. Aggravated DUIs are felonies and often lead to temporary forfeiture of a vehicle.
“A lot of people can’t afford to pay the monthly fine, so they have to back to jail,” Torrez said.
People convicted of a first offense may feel compelled by circ*mstances to drive on a suspended license to take their children to school or go to work, Torrez said. If they're stopped by police, it massively compounds their legal problems.
“They can’t get out from underneath it,” he said of their DUI debt.
Phoenix criminal defense lawyer Jack Litwak said jail and the humiliation of installing an interlock device, which prevents a vehicle from starting if it detects alcohol in the driver’s breath, are both “shockers” to average folks. But the cost and other factors can make conviction much more unpleasant.
Hiring a lawyer is a good idea for any legal issue. Motorists stopped for DUI may face multiple charges at once following a DUI arrest with court proceedings resembling a typical criminal case. For instance, a driver could face separate counts for impairment to the slightest degree, BAC over 0.08, illegal drug metabolites in the blood, and a child under 15 in the vehicle. Prosecutors and defense lawyers may hash out plea deals that reduce charges and penalties.
But lose, and it might cost you $10,000, Litwak said.
“Obviously, Uber is cheaper,” he said.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving want even stricter penalties
Whether Arizona has the most severe penalties for DUI of any state is a subjective question, but Mothers Against Drunk Driving and various news or statistical sites claim no state is harsher.
The deterrence effect of Arizona's laws is unknown, though a 2018 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that "restrictive policy environments" in some states reduced DUI-related fatalities.
Tania Bustamante, MADD’s state executive director, said she thinks Arizona’s DUI laws are indeed the toughest in the nation and that some people are heeding them.
The number of DUI arrests in the state averaged about 28,500 per year from 2012 to 2023, remaining flat over that time, according to figures provided by Torrez. Yet Arizona gained several hundred thousand new residents in that time, meaning the arrest number per capita did decline slightly in the past 11 years.
But the state’s 2022 Crash Facts report, the most recent available, shows that alcohol-related crashes increased from 2018 to 2022, going from 3.7% of all crashes to 4.6%. While the number of fatal alcohol-related crashes went down slightly during those five years, the number of injuries in those crashes increased. Dozens more die each year in crashes due to impairment from illegal drugs or marijuana, the report states.
The answer, said Bustamante: Make the law even tougher.
MADD plans to lobby the state Legislature next year to drop the level presuming impairment from 0.08% to 0.05%.
Utah saw a decrease in alcohol-related fatalities since becoming the only state with a 0.05 BAC presumed intoxication level.
Reach the reporter atrstern@arizonarepublic.comor 480-276-3237. Follow him on X.com @raystern
