Denver Personal Injury Law Blog

DUI is a common charge in Colorado.

In last five weeks of 2011 alone, from Thanksgiving through the day before New Year's Eve, over 1,300 Colorado drivers had been arrested on drunk driving charges. If you have been charged with drunk driving in Denver or elsewhere in Colorado, you are not alone.

How you respond to charges of DUI or DWAI (driving while ability impaired) is very important. Your driver's license may be on the line. A first offense DUI, for example, involves a 3-month license suspension in Colorado. That is a significant problem when you need to be able to drive to your job and for other purposes.

There is also the possibility of criminal penalties, including fines, jail time, and community service. The fines for a first-offense DUI can be up to $1,000, plus the costs of complying with other terms of the sentence.

It's possible that, even if you are convicted, you can minimize many of these consequences by entering a treatment program. A Denver DUI defense attorney can help you explore that and other options and advocate for your rights and interests within the criminal justice system.

Commercial vehicle crashes do terrible damage. Nationally, truck accidents involving such vehicles have killed over 3,000 people a year in recent years.

To prevent more of these crashes, safety inspections of trucking companies and drivers have to become more effective.

That is why Colorado officials are finally cracking down on commercial trucks that fail inspections. The goal is to improve safety on the road and prevent Colorado truck accidents.

One common violation is lack of a valid Colorado driver's license. Other violations include such things as carrying unsecured equipment in the trailer or failing to properly attach the trailer to the tractor. Inspectors also often find problems with oil leaks and brakes that are out of adjustment. Even brakes that are supposedly self-adjusting can get out of adjustment - turning a truck into a danger on the road.

The Colorado State Patrol, the state revenue department, and local police departments collaborate to conduct compliance checks on trucks. Statewide, the patrol sets up over 150 check points every year for commercial vehicles.

This month, a key federal safety agency plans to issue guidelines on the types of potentially distracting technology that new vehicles come with. The goal is to prevent the burgeoning number of gadgets and apps from causing distracted driving accidents in Colorado and across the country.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is working on regulations to limit the use of smartphone applications available inside cars.

It's true that 34 states have some form of ban on texting while driving. But having a ban on the books is one thing; enforcing it is another.

That is why it's important to get a handle on which, and how many, factory-installed technological features will be available inside new vehicles.

For example, isn't it asking for trouble to have a built-in display screen in which drivers can engage in live chat about a sports contest?

The problems such devices poses could only get worse, as a generation that grew up on text messaging starts buying their own cars.

The numbers tell a sobering story about drunk driving. Nationally, every year, over 10,000 people lose their lives in drunk driving accidents. That's about one every hour, somewhere in the U.S.

Or consider this startling statistic: Over the course of a lifetime, one in every three people will be involved in an alcohol-related motor vehicle accident.

Every time we go out on the road, we're rolling the dice.

Of course, in a civilized society, law enforcement is supposed to be there to protect us. And indeed, drunk driving is a criminal offense.

One step that law enforcement agencies can take is DUI checkpoints. That is what police did over the weekend in Lakewood. The location for the checkpoint was on West Alameda Avenue near South Easton Street, a place where a number of drunk driving arrests have taken place in the past. There have also been several serious drunk driving accidents in or near this location.