Recent Change to DUI Law

Recent Change to DUI Law

Starting this Thursday at midnight, if you are arrested for a DUI, your vehicle will be impounded with a mandatory 12 hour hold.  Generally, defendants who are arrested for a DUI are released from custody rather than taken to jail.  If this happens to you, you will not be able to reclaim your vehicle right away.

Up until now the vehicle was released to another person to avoid towing and impoundment charges.  This will not happen now.  Even if the vehicle is owned by someone else, it will be towed.

Under the new law, the impounded car will be held for 12 hours. There are three exceptions in the law: If the car is owned by someone other than the person arrested, such as a business owner, the owner can reclaim the car at the impound lot; a registered co-owner can claim the car; and commercial and farm vehicles can be reclaimed by the legal owner as long as it is not the person arrested.

The thinking behind this new law is that a person under the influence could leave the police station and return to their vehicle.  This might put an unsafe person back on the road.  This happened in Whatcom County back in 2007, and a person was seriously hurt in an accident.  That person sued the county and the State Patrol, and subsequently won $5.5 million in a lawsuit.  The jury found the state patrol negligent because the woman took a cab back to her car after being arrested for drunken driving.  She was involved in the injury accident after she was returned to her car.

The result of this new law will, in theory, make the road safer from drunk drivers.  In all those cases where the driver was innocent of the charge, they will incur the cost of towing and impoundment regardless of their condition.  Further, they will be unable to retrieve their vehicle until the 12 hour hold is up.