Political Quotes

“I rise to introduce the ROADS SAFE Act of 2010. This legislation will encourage the development of new tools to fight drunk driving and has the potential to save 8,000 lives every year. Tragic drunk driving crashes often prompt communities to do more to prevent drunk driving. This was the case in my home State of New Mexico back in 1992, when a drunk driver killed a mother and her three girls on Christmas Eve. He was speeding down the highway 90 miles an hour, going the wrong way down an interstate highway. This crash helped change attitudes in my State. But it should not take a tragedy for us to do more to prevent drunk driving. In 2008, drunk driving killed about 12,000 Americans, including 143 people in New Mexico. That is an average of 32 people killed every day by drunk driving. This unacceptable death toll is all the more shocking when you consider that each one of those deaths was preventable. Yet even as the overall number of people killed on our highways has declined, drunk driving still accounts for about one-third of all traffic fatalities. It is even more worrisome that a drunk driver has just a 2-percent chance of being caught.”