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Fla. Senator Proposes Pink Tags for DUI
A Tampa Bay-area senator wants Floridians to think pink before they have a drink. Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, has filed a bill that would require "bright pink" license plates on vehicles driven by people with restricted driving privileges resulting from a conviction for driving under the influence. "Maybe it will embarrass people and keep them from drinking and driving," Fasano said. "Maybe they'll think twice." Filed Nov. 1, Senate Bill 538 calls for the first three characters on the pink license plate to read "DUI." The bill also says police "may stop any vehicle that bears a DUI plate without probable cause to check the driver."
Story Continues Below If passed, Florida would join Ohio and Michigan as a state with a punitive license plate law for DUI offenders. Many states have considered similar legislation, including Tennessee this year, but most bills have died after debate about privacy issues. "Pink plates would hold out individuals for punishment as well as ridicule. We are very opposed to it," said Larry Spalding, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida. Nicknamed "scarlet letter plates" in Ohio, the yellow tags with red letters are issued at a judge's discretion to people with multiple DUI convictions and restricted driving privileges, said Fred Stratmann, a spokesman for the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles. The Ohio General Assembly passed the license law in 1967. But issuance of the plates has increased dramatically in the past two years after lawmakers approved the tags for two-time offenders, Stratmann said. Before 2003, the plates were issued only to people with five or more convictions. "We haven't been sued by the ACLU for this yet, which is very encouraging," Stratmann said. "We'll issue about 6,000 plates this year."
In Michigan, a paper tag is issued to people who have been arrested for driving under the influence, if they have a previous DUI conviction. That tag is valid until the criminal case is adjudicated. If passed in Florida, Fasano's bill would affect tens of thousands of drivers. About 840,000 of Florida's 15 million licensed drivers have an "active DUI sanction" on their driving records. And a small percentage of those have limited driving privileges, such as permission to drive only to and from work. Exact numbers were unavailable Monday, said Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles spokesman Frank Penela. "Considering all the education for drunk driving over the years, the numbers are staggering, and they don't improve," Fasano said. Statewide, there were 45,926 convictions for DUI in 2004, up 9 percent from 2003. Hillsborough County had 4,971 convictions in 2004, a 21 percent increase from the previous year. Fasano said the genesis of his bill was a call from a resident of his district, which includes parts of Pinellas, Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties. "I had never heard of anything like this before," he said. "And that's quite simply how it started, with a call from a constituent asking us to look at what's being done in other states." Fasano said he recently began searching for a House sponsor of the bill and is unsure how the bill might be received by state legislators. "It could take two years to get the support, but I think it's worth the effort," Fasano said. "If I can't get a House sponsor, then maybe I can get it passed in the Senate and attached to a larger transportation bill. "If it comes to my attention that the language on probable cause is unconstitutional, then we can pull that out. We'll do what it takes."
Florida made national headlines about 20 years ago when Sarasota County judges ordered convicted DUI offenders to place bright red bumper stickers on their vehicles as a term of their probation. The stickers read "Convicted DUI, Restricted License." In 1986, the practice survived a lawsuit and was upheld by the 2nd District Court of Appeal. Becky Titus was the Sarasota judge who issued the most bumper stickers. She also helped develop the stickers, which had Velcro patches so that people using the vehicle who were not DUI offenders could cover the sticker. Titus also was the last to order their use in 1988, before she was elected to the circuit bench and stopped presiding over DUI cases. She remains a proponent of exposing DUI offenders. "The number of DUI arrests in Sarasota went way down after we started this," Titus said Monday. "First-time offenders had told us that the worst part of their DUI experience was their names appearing in the newspaper, and that led us to decide to use the bumper sticker as a roving advertisement against DUI ... to get people to worry about it happening to them."
© 2005 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Editor's note:
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