Her family normally would expect Sarah Towery to be returning home this time of year -- her birthday is July 1. The date made Friday's local announcement -- that Indiana's new drunken driving limit takes effect Sunday --quite personal for her father.

'A NEW MAN IN TOWN': Jerry McCory, director of the Governor’s Council on Impaired and Dangerous Driving, speaks Friday at the YWCA in Lafayette, where he helped promote the state’s new drunken driving limit. (Photo by Frank Oliver, Journal and Courier)

A chance meeting with a drunken driver killed Sarah and a friend, Chip Smith, in 1999. She would've turned 27 on Sunday.

"People see it as a restriction but when they take a step back, they may see that it's their life that gets saved," Dan Towery said.

At midnight tonight, the 0.08 legal limit will be enforced throughout Indiana, and officials warned at the YWCA Friday afternoon that the hard-fought legislation is backed up by a task force and funding to enforce it.

"When you drink and drive, the window of opportunity for you to be arrested has just greatly increased," said Jerry McCory, director of the Governor's Council on Impaired and Dangerous Driving. "For those people who do, they're going to get to meet a new man in town."

McCory was referring to the special prosecutor assigned to the nine-county task force, whose sole duty will be to charge drunken driving offenders.

In all, the task force consists of 39 police departments, seven sheriff's departments and the Indiana State Police in areas with high numbers of alcohol-related crashes. And bolstered by approximately $500,000 in state funds, the task force will expand in October to eventually cover Indiana's 92 counties.

After more than a decade of rejecting calls to lower the blood-alcohol content standard to 0.08 percent from 0.10 percent, Indiana lawmakers approved the change in April.

Failure to pass the measure would have cost the state millions in federal highway construction funding.

Several lawmakers opposed the lower BAC standard because they think Congress is blackmailing state legislators with a federal mandate to change state laws.

"It's never easy to pass a restrictive law," said Rep. Sheila Klinker, D-Lafayette. "This is a mandate that we should have, and hopefully we're going to save many lives."

Both Klinker and Sen. Ronnie Alting, R-Lafayette, supported 0.08, but say it needs to be coupled with repeat offender and alcohol server training bills to be effective.

"Education ... will be a good partner to 0.08," Alting said.

Although the statistics are down, 342 people were killed last year in alcohol-related crashes on Hoosier roadways.

And while the legality of drunken driving checkpoints remains under debate, Tippecanoe County's status in the new DUI task force gives local police money to staff extra patrols and seat belt check points.

"That's going to up the chances of a DUI arrest and keep someone from being killed," chief Gene Reed of the Lafayette Police Department said.

Tippecanoe is joined by Lake, Grant, Steuben, Porter, Allen, Vigo, Hamilton and Marion counties in the DUI task force.

Dan Towery championed the push for Indiana to adopt 0.08 and will continue fighting for legislation that mandates training for alcohol servers, and stiffer penalties for repeat drunken driving offenders.

Most of all, he'd like people to look beyond the statistics of the legislation going into effect on his daughter's birthday.

"It's easy to get caught up in the numbers," he said. "That 342 was Sarah. That was Chip."

Attention, boaters

-- Adam Kovac/Journal and Courier