Open-container bill makes sense

Here we are again.

Once every two years, folks from across the state get together in Helena and decide what the rest of the country will think about Montana.

If they raise taxes or lower taxes, it affects how many businesses will locate or relocate in our state. If they pass legislation on social issues, they can either put down a welcome mat or put up a stop sign at the border for certain special-interest groups.

In other words, the Legislature matters not just for the specific laws it passes, but also for the signals it sends.

And there is no worse signal to send - to our children, to heavy drinkers, or to people who might visit our state highways - than the signal that says it's OK to drink and drive.

But yet that is what has happened at every legislative session in recent memory.

Now, once again, the Legislature is considering several bills to forbid open containers of alcohol inside the passenger compartment of a vehicle on the highways. The Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed one such bill Tuesday on an 11-1 vote, but what will happen in the full Senate and House is anyone's guess.

You'd think it would be a pretty obvious step to take. After all, a recent study showed that Montana has the third-highest rate of alcohol-related fatalities in the country.

But some folks claim that driving the backroads of Montana with a beer in your hand is part of the Old West heritage and must not be sacrificed just because times have changed.

Well, shooting up a barroom ceiling when you had a toot also used to be an Old West tradition, but that one fortunately has been retired.

Times do indeed change, and so do social attitudes, and there is no excuse anymore for turning a blind eye to drunk driving. Allowing passengers to drink is an invitation to trouble, and allowing a driver to put down a sip or two is just plain stupid.

Police have a hard enough job without having to decide whether the guys returning from a hunting trip are "really drunk" or just look like they are drunk because they are holding beer bottles out the window and singing another rousing chorus of "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight."

Let's have enough respect for the idea of saving lives on the highways that we are willing to have a zero tolerance policy on drinking and driving. As even a schoolchild knows, they just don't mix.