HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Loose laws and a cowboy culture that condones drinking behind the wheel are being blamed for a disturbing fact in Big Sky country: People on Montana's roads are more likely to die in alcohol-related crashes than motorists in almost any other state.
Last year, Montana had the nation's second-highest rate of alcohol-related traffic deaths, trailing only Mississippi.
"There's a cultural element in Montana that drinking's OK and drinking and driving's OK. It's been around for a long time," said Bill Muhs of Bozeman, whose daughter was killed by a drunken driver 11 years ago.
Driving in the Big Sky State is a necessity. Montana, the fourth-largest state in area, is 300 miles from the Wyoming state line to the Canadian border. Driving the 550 miles across Montana is like going from Portland, Maine, to Richmond, Va. — a trip that goes through eight states.
For more than three years during the 1990s, Montana drivers were allowed to go as fast as they wanted as long as it was "reasonable and proper" based on traffic, road conditions and weather. It was only two years ago that speed limits were added to the state's 70,000 miles of highway.
Montana has resisted lowering its legal blood-alcohol limit from 0.10 percent to 0.08 percent, as more than half the states have done.
And unlike 34 other states, Montana allows open alcoholic-beverage containers in vehicles outside cities, which means drivers can — and do — have a beer while they cruise the long highways. It is a practice lawmakers have been unwilling to ban.
"In your rural areas of the West, there's an attitude that drinking is a right and you should be able to drink and do whatever you want to do," said Mona Sumner, clinical director of the Rimrock Foundation rehab center in Billings.
Last year in Montana, population 902,000, a total of 110 people died in alcohol-related traffic accidents. Over the past seven years, the death toll has averaged just over 100 a year.
The rate of alcohol-related traffic fatalities in Montana last year was 12.19 deaths per 100,000 residents, just behind Mississippi at 13.32. In 1999, Montana had the nation's highest alcohol-related traffic death rate per 100 million miles traveled, at 1.05.
Drunken-driving penalties in Montana range from a minimum of a $100 fine and 24 hours in jail for a first conviction to a $10,000 fine and 13 months in prison for a fourth conviction. A first-time conviction results in the loss of a driver's license for six months — with exceptions available for work — and requires enrollment in an alcohol-treatment program.
Muhs, vice president of a local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, wants such changes as tougher penalties, a ban on open containers and a drop in the legal limit to 0.08 percent.
The federal government is turning up the pressure on Montana by withholding highway construction money.
Montana already is losing $11 million every year because it has refused to ban open containers or get tougher on repeat offenders. The state could also lose an additional $15 million a year if the legal limit is not lowered to 0.08 percent.
Montana Attorney General Mike McGrath and Al Goke, chief of Montana's Traffic and Safety Bureau, question whether lowering the legal limit will do much good, since the average blood-alcohol level of those arrested is 0.17 percent.
Gov. Judy Martz, whose former top policy adviser pleaded guilty to negligent homicide in a drunken-driving crash that killed the state House majority leader this summer, said she has no problem with banning open containers and getting tougher on repeat offenders. But she, too, acknowledged doubts about whether lowering the legal limit will make a difference.
Still, Martz predicted the Legislature will give in on this point.
"The federal government is shoving this down the throat of every state," she said. "They know we can't afford to lose federal funding on highways."