Monitech
North Carolina's leading Ignition Interlock provider
A trend that has been sweeping legislatures across the country has hit North Carolina. Currently 29 states mandate ignition interlocks for all DWI offenses, and a group of lawmakers want North Carolina to be number 30. An ignition interlock, or car breathalyzer, prevents a vehicle from starting if the driver has been drinking. States which …
The message: you can’t kill someone with a vehicle while drunk and not serve jail time. That’s the essence of the bill that the North Carolina House approved recently. At the core of the argument surrounding the bill is judicial discretion – the belief that a judge should have leeway in sentencing offenders because each …
College students are bombarded with messages not to drink and drive. They’re the targets of web and TV ads, posters, and awareness campaigns. They have made an impression – drinking and driving is less prevalent than it used to be in past decades. However, people in the 18-25 age range are still the worst offenders. …
It’s not easy being a judge. When the verdict has come back guilty, it’s your job to determine the punishment. The law sets down guidelines, but you are there to determine how serious the offense was, and if the sentence you deliver will deter others from the same crime. It’s not easy. In North Carolina …
No two drunk driving offenses are alike. One of the ways the seriousness of a North Carolina DWI is determined is how many previous DWIs are on a driver’s record. We call this the lookback period. But how far do you go back? If an offender got another DWI say, 30 years ago, should that …
Insanity, they say, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That makes license suspension for DWI pretty crazy. Ronnie Lee Welch is today’s example. Recently he was charged with his 16th DWI in Gaston County. The judge, fed up with punishments that weren’t having effect, decided to stop the …
Last Friday a few hundred lights were lit in Raleigh – 431, to be exact, marking the number of people who died as a result of impaired driving in the state. The lights are lit every year during the tree-lighting ceremony on the Capitol grounds. The Governor’s Highway Safety Program and Mothers Against Drunk Driving …
It’s a parent’s nightmare: a school bus driver has been drinking. It happened in Cherokee County, North Carolina recently. Fortunately, no one was hurt when the school bus got stuck at an intersection. The driver was spotted, tested, and arrested after he failed a sobriety test. Seven children were aboard. There is a special kind of …
