Utah DUI laws get high marks

WASHINGTON — Utah is one of only 11 states that have enacted all seven "optimal" drunken driving laws supported by Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety.

But the state's failure to enact a primary seat-belt law or to require booster seats for children ages 4 to 8 or to require motorcyclists to wear helmets dropped the state's overall highway safety rating to middle of the pack.

None of the 50 states has enacted all 14 laws considered by the organization to be essential for improving highway safety. Thirteen states were credited with making significant progress, and seven were criticized for doing little.

Utah was in neither group.

Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, which is a national alliance of consumers, health-care providers and insurance companies, said states are getting better overall, but the pace of improvement is slow.

In the past year, only one additional state has passed a primary seat-belt law, and only a handful of states worked on graduated drivers' licenses for teenagers, although they "merely tinkered" with the issue, said Judith Lee Stone, president of the organization.

Of the eight states adopting booster-seat laws, only two cover kids up to age 8, she added. And only one more state passed a helmet law after repealing it several years ago.

"In short, the legislative landscape of highway safety laws hasn't changed much for the better" since the group issued its last report in January, Stone said.

Only 21 states, and Utah isn't one of them, have laws that allow police to ticket someone for not wearing a seat belt.

That provision has surfaced several times during the Utah Legislature, which appears poised to take up the measure again in the 2005 session.

Sen. Karen Hale, D-Salt Lake, has a proposal on seat belt enforcement that is bound to generate the kind of controversial debates of years past. In the 2004 session, she pushed unsuccessfully for a primary seat belt law for drivers over 19.

And in the 2003 session, Rep. Carol Spackman Moss, D-Holladay, failed to get the booster seat provision written into the law without success. In what she thought was a noncontroversial measure, she also proposed allowing officers to ticket any adult in a car who is not buckled up should the driver be pulled over for a separate violation.

Her efforts backfired when a Republican lawmaker introduced an amendment to her bill that would have eliminated any seat belt laws for adults.

"I have been shocked and dismayed at the kind of resistance I get from the Legislature, which is contrary to all the positive feedback I get from the public," she said.