A new state audit is raising serious concerns about whether Washington drivers ordered to install ignition interlock devices following DUI convictions are actually complying with the requirement, with officials acknowledging they lack reliable data on how many offenders are still driving without the court-mandated equipment.
The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee voted this month to distribute findings showing significant gaps in compliance and monitoring across the state’s ignition interlock programme. Washington State Patrol Sergeant Brandon Villanti told lawmakers the situation remains troubling. “We’re one of the leading states when it comes to compliance, unfortunately it’s still not great. It’s still not great in the 40% range,” Villanti said.
The audit identified cost as a central barrier to compliance. The devices run approximately $2,700 per year, and roughly half of those required to install them earn less than $28,000 annually. Financial assistance programmes exist but auditors found they do not reach enough eligible drivers. JLARC Research Analyst Zack Freeman explained the limits of what the state actually knows about non-compliance. “There is not data to explicitly know whether a driver is continuing to drive unless they are pulled over by state patrol,” Freeman told lawmakers, noting that crash reports involving impaired drivers represent the only other available data point.
The audit also found a structural accountability problem. The Department of Licensing and the Washington State Patrol both oversee the ignition interlock programme, but neither agency has been formally designated as responsible for ensuring compliance. The audit recommended the agencies enter a joint agreement to address that gap. Both agencies agreed with the findings and are working with the Washington Traffic Safety Commission on a set of final recommendations to present to lawmakers by 15 December 2026.
The stakes of the compliance failure are not abstract. Mark McKechnie, policy and communications director at the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, said impaired driving is implicated in half of all fatal crashes in the state. “Over 3,000 people died over the last decade,” McKechnie said. “The main person responsible has been the individual, and so I do think this shows that there needs to be some additional oversight to make sure that they are going through that process.”
For Mary Bobbitt, the audit’s findings carry a deeply personal weight. She lost her son Nicholas in 2010, just days before his high school graduation, when a drunk driver struck his stalled vehicle on the side of Interstate 5, killing Nicholas and his friend. Bobbitt has been pushing Washington lawmakers to tighten oversight of the interlock programme ever since. “I don’t want to see any other mothers or fathers or friends losing the people they love, if it could have been prevented by getting compliance for this,” she said. She argued that cost cannot remain a barrier to a device designed to prevent deaths. “If the cost of getting that installed is what they found is keeping people from doing it, there has to be a way around that. We have to fund that,” Bobbitt said.
Her concern about what non-compliance looks like in practice was equally direct. “They’re still driving their cars with no supervision. I do know that people are driving without them because they can’t afford to get them. So if they can’t afford them, they’re not putting them on their car, and then they’re driving without them, and then we’re back to the beginning, where people are driving intoxicated,” she said.
