After a particularly bad drunk driving accident occurred recently in St. Louis Park, many are starting to debate whether or not the Minnesota state drunk driving laws are too lax. In the accident, two people were killed and nine more were injured due to a driver being behind the wheel with a blood alcohol content that was four times above the legal limit. The driver in question was a man named Steven Bailey, who had five previous drunk driving convictions under is belt. According to a report from 2020 done by the Mothers Against Drunk Driving organization, when scoring the severity of the drunk driving laws per state, Minnesota was given a 2.5 out of 5. The national average was a 3.2.

After the fatal accident, many Minnesotans are pushing for stronger legislation.

Given that Steven Bailey had five prior infractions on his record, many are left wondering how he was still able to get behind the wheel so easily while drunk. This is because in Minnesota, licenses are not revoked after multiple drunk driving accidents. This is one of the strongest departures from other states in the U.S., as most other states do have a law in place for this. With Minnesota’s current laws in place, you could have dozens of drunk driving accidents of your personal record and still freely get behind the wheel. There even have been reported incidents of drunk drivers who have made dozens of infractions on their report, yet still nothing has been done due to the structuring of the law.

The Department of Public Safety made a report that showed shocking numbers.

According to the department, approximately 610,000 residents of Minnesota have a drunk driving infraction on their permanent record. This number breaks down to about 14%, or 1 in every 7 drivers in the state.

People have already begun their push for permanent license revocation after multiple reports of drunk driving. Furthermore, people are hopeful that there will be sobriety checkpoints added into neighborhoods as well in order to regularly check in with those on the road. At this time, it is unclear the route that the state will take, but many await good news of stronger laws being introduced.