Lack of objectivity about posters reflects on lack of objectivity on the substance of the argument.
As one who has followed crash statistics for 37+ years it is very clear that alcohol is an evil in our society. It is also clear that the attempts to fight that evil have abridged our constitutional rights just as the attempts to fight the evil of terrorism have abridged our rights.
When is it worth the tradeoff? Most of us accept a certain amount of censorship eg loose lips sink ships. But are road checks unreasonable search and seizure? Is jury tampering worth it?
Consider alcohol is the #1 factor in
traffic deaths, traffic injuries
boating, skiing, ATV and all recreational equipment activities
hunting injuries and errors
accidents to adults in the home
domestic violence, assault and battery
disorderly conduct
Also clearly the enforcement of DUI laws does influence behavior. Check the statistics state by state, city by city as they adopt a stricter DUI law, or adopt a stricter enforcement of it. Drunks will intentionally drive around a suburb known to enforce DUI rather than go through it and risk a ticket. Thus drunks have more crashes in the bypass suburb that does not enforce DUI.
Now as a yardstick, compare that to seat belts. Unlike DUI enforcement that can be shown to have prevent many crashes, Seat belts have not prevented a single crash. When a crash has occurred, they have saved a few lives and prevented a few lives from being saved.
Recently rush hour traffic was stopped on the RR tracks in Elmwood Park, IL. The cars had no where to go. When the train came bearing down on them, the people in those cars could not undo their seatbelts fast enough and died. There are numerous anecdotal incidents on both sides.
Statistically it is a wash for seat belts. But statistically DUI enforcement is extremely effective. The problem with MADD is that they get our taxmoney to lobby our lawmakers and executive and judicial branches for both DUI and seatbelt enforcement. They are now in it for the money. It is now all about grantsmanship. They don't really care about either the lives saved, or the lives and civil liberties lost. All you have to do is try to pull their taxpayer funded grants and you'll see what they now care about.
Good post with one exception.
I have followed DUI and traffic death stats for about that same time, mostly anecdotally, not religiously but my view is that while miles driven, by more drivers in more cars has increased consistently, total deaths have declined. In the 60s, the total count was in the low 50,000 range. Now it is in the mid 40,000 range.
The other thing is that 30-35 years ago, a drunk driving death was just that. A drunk killed someone. Plain and simple. 50% were caused by drunk drivers.
Nowadays, the definitions have changed. The new term is 'alcohol related' and that means that if you -- a sober driver taking me home after having any amount of alcohol -- are killed by a sober, but careless driver, it's recorded as 'alcohol related'. Even with the expanded definition, 'alcohol related' deaths account for about 1/3 of total traffic deaths.
I bet true drunk driving deaths are quite a bit less, but even at these questionable numbers, this category of deaths dropped from 25,000 to 16,000 a year.
I will agree that it is still too high a number and education and proper targeting of the real threat are good steps, but ignoring the Constitution and violating rights will someday lead to a more deaths. A whole lot more.