Dawghouse Blog

Rik, deaths cause by drunk driving are a tragedy. While it's not one that has touched my family (thankfully) I'd still describe myself as being staunchly against drunk driving. It's just I believe groups like MADD have gone very far over the line into prohibitionist territory and I object to that more because I think it's deceptive and dishonest than because I don't agree with it. If they are against people drinking, that's their right to lobby for, but it's pretty uncool to raise money and wield enormous political power by publicly championing an issue almost everyone agree with (no drunk driving) but in reality lobbying against all drinking (an issue far less people agree with). Regardless, arresting people who are drunk because they _might_ drive a car is an abuse, particularly if it's done to address drunk driving. I think the least such stings could do is to actually wait and see who gets in their car.

And in a larger sense, drunk driving sort of has that "school shooting" mentality these days -- while it happens and is a huge tragedy, it doesn't happen as often as you might think. And drunk driving deaths have plummetted since the 60's and 70's and have been relatively flat for 20 years now. I think it's reasonable to think drunk driving deaths are about as low as they are going to get, and most incidents are caused either by repeat offenders not likely to be stopped by any measure or by people who, due to low blood-alcohol thresholds, may not have even been considered "drunk" 10 or 20 years ago. It'd be interesting to see just how much of an effect a .06 or .08 BA level affects driving compared to all the other things that people do in their cars. I suspect there's be some other, more culpable common culprits (i.e. cell phones, satellite radios, passengers, fatigue, etc.). Maybe I'm wrong on that, but it seems clear that MADD has no interest or motivation to honestly explore the data in that regard.