I attended a seminar for New York DWI lawyers. A great program that covered a lot of topics. One new development nationally is a concept called Extreme DUI. The idea is to increase penalties when the person's blood alcohol content (BAC) is over a certain level.
Arizona has already adopted Extreme DUI. You can read a bit about their DUI laws on this page from the Arizona Governor's Office of Highway Safety.
In their take, regular DUI is a BAC of 0.08 and above. Extreme DUI is when the BAC is 0.15 or above. The fine for an Extreme DUI is $1700, where a regular DUI is only (only?) $950. As an aside, you have to wonder how they chose $950. Once you're going to $950, why not choose $1000?
Anyway, a couple of the speakers at the seminar mentioned this and they believe it is going to spread around the US and will soon be here in New York State. The speakers were all very successful (and very respected) DWI lawyers, and they joked about how they would now all be able to afford limos.
It is possible that Extreme DWI would lead to not only higher fines, but also longer suspensions and perhaps a greater likelihood of jailtime. We'll be watching.
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