Middlesex County, New Jersey, has renewed its initiative to combat drunk driving during the Prom and Graduation season this year. In this regard, periodic checkpoints shall be set up throughout Middlesex County during the month of May and June. The target locations for the DWI roadblocks shall coincide with the prom and graduation schedules throughout the County.
The DUI detail shall be comprised of local police officers and members of the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office Vehicular Fatality Team. The program is over two decades old and is funded through a grant from the State. The program appears to have been successful in preventing alcohol related deaths insofar as there have been no such incidents in the County during the Prom and Graduation season for quite a time period.
Our DWI attorneys have occasion to represent many underage motorist every year in drunk driving cases. The pivotal thing that most of the public fails to understand is that NJ law has a no tolerance policy for alcohol consumption by minors. The result is a New Jersey Underage drinking and driving law which is triggered when a motorist under the age of 21 has any alcohol in his system whatsoever.
There is no blood alcohol threshold for someone underage. What this means is that if an underage driver is operating a motor vehicle with any alcohol in his system, he can be convicted of Underage DWI.
Thankfully, the punishment, penalties, and long-term consequences of an Underage DWI can be much different from those of an adult in New Jeersey. It is therefore crucially important that any finding of guilt in one of these cases involve the underage dwi statute as opposed to the normal DWI statute (i.e. an underage motorist is usually charged with both if his or her blood alcohol is over the legal limit of 0.08).