SC bar costs still high because DUI death rate still high
- SCCLR Newsletter
- Feb 7
- 3 min read
By: Post and Courier Editorial Staff
We could call this a grand lesson about being careful what you ask for: The Post and Courier’s Sydney Dunlap reports that bar owners who pushed so hard for the Legislature to reduce their liability when their drunken patrons kill innocent victims now complain that they're still going out of business, and that the new law might actually hurt them.
They blame their continued woes on minor new responsibilities that accompany their liability relief — having to pay for responsible server training, for instance, and keep up with documents that show the training was completed. Unconsidered, apparently, is the unfortunate fact that restaurants and especially bars are risky operations, many of which go out of business even in states with the most bar-friendly insurance laws, especially in the first year or two.
Fortunately, there’s a pretty obvious way to speed up the slow effect that last year’s changes to state law will have on liquor liability insurance costs: It starts with understanding that neither the law the hospitality industry got changed nor related laws it fought unsuccessfully to change were the main drivers of the industry's high insurance rates.
The main driver of high liquor-liability insurance costs is South Carolina’s nation-leading DUI death rate.
The solution wasn’t to fiddle around with insurance requirements, which had the disastrous side effect of helping bars at the expense of innocent victims’ of bar patrons. It’s to drive down that death rate — which reducing bars’ liability can never do. Just the opposite, in fact, particularly since the new law actually reduces the largest deterrent to bars overserving their customers.
The solution is to close the massive loophole in state law that makes it nearly impossible to convict a drunken driver — even one who injures or kills innocent people — if the driver stumbles out of range of a law enforcement officer’s dashcam during an arrest or in any other way makes the video less than perfect.
The solution is to eliminate the law that encourages a driver to refuse a Breathalyzer test, by undermining the provision that immediately strips drivers of their license if they do refuse. That loophole lets drivers immediately get a “temporary alcohol license” so they don’t actually suffer any consequences for refusing to be tested.
And just to clarify, nobody except us seems to be actually talking about eliminating that loophole — only requiring the drivers who refuse a Breathalyzer and get that temporary alcohol license to use an ignition-interlock device that prevents them from starting their car if there’s any alcohol on their breath. And even that would be a temporary requirement.
The solution is to curtail (or preferably eliminate) the practice of DUI charges getting pleaded down so many times that someone who gets caught driving drunk a half-dozen times still can plead guilty to first offense driving under the influence, which carries much lower penalties than offenses the courts acknowledge as repeats.
On Thursday, the Senate passed a bill with all of these reforms and others — reforms that, if enacted, will reduce bars’ liquor liability costs because they will reduce the DUI death rate on our highways because they will reduce the number of drunk drivers on our highways. And that will make us much more like the rest of the country, where drunk drivers still kill and maim innocent victims, but at a much lower rate.
We still need to eliminate those temporary alcohol licenses, but the Senate's plan to make sure people who use them haven't been drinking before they start their vehicles is a huge step forward. Even with that compromise, S.52 is frankly a much better bill than we would have hoped for, given the history of such efforts at the Statehouse, and that's worth applauding. And maintaining. The fact is that for all the tough talk from House leaders, it's the House that has so frequently blocked more modest reforms to our DUI law.
Many bar owners are well-aware of the need for a tougher DUI law. Many favor a tougher law. We need their support, and not just their passive agreement when asked if they support reforms. We need the type of lobbying they engaged in over the past several years to convince the Legislature to eliminate an important anti-DUI law in their naïve effort to reduce their costs. And we need many more bar and restaurant owners to join them in demanding a law that solves the problem rather than merely addressing — and likely never solving — their symptom of the problem.
Specifically, victims’ advocates need help to get this bill through the House intact and to Gov. Henry McMaster before they end the 2026 session. We have less than three months.
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