From the L.A. Times letters to the editor:

I take no position on the merit of Radley Balko’s Dec. 9 commentary, “Targeting the Social Drinker Is Just MADD,” but one assertion he makes is in error. He refers to “driving under the influence — a less serious charge than driving while intoxicated.” A person who drives after drinking in California may be subject to prosecution under one of two provisions: driving with a blood alcohol level at .08% or more (or lower if the person is under 21) or driving under the influence, which means that the driver’s ability to control the vehicle is impaired by alcohol or a drug or a combination of the two (and “drug” means any drug, not just illegal drugs or those used with a prescription). Punishment for either is precisely the same and can be severe. Either will have the same effect on a driver’s license and upon the costs of insurance.

You don’t have to be “drunk” to be in violation of the law, and drivers in California should not be misled into thinking that it is less serious to be under the influence than to be intoxicated. The best advice remains: If you drink, don’t drive.

John Hamilton Scott
Sherman Oaks

Well, that you don’t have to be “drunk” to be inviolation of the law is part of the problem, isn’t it? The whole purpose of roadblocks is to catch people who aren’t driving erratically enough to be noticed and stopped by cops. But if they aren’t driving erratically enough to be stopped by cops, then maybe they really aren’t such a danger, are they? I was unaware of the California laws as they pertain to DUI vs. DWI. I do know that in D.C. a “DUI” can be charged with a BAC as low as .01. It’s every bit as damaging to a person’s reputation, even if the sentencing is lighter.

Methinks Balko doth protest too much. Pointing out that the number of people killed by drunk drivers has leveled off at 16,000 a year hardly is a comforting statistic. If we are expected to give up or compromise some civil liberties to fight terror, why not do the same for a “terror” that kills as many as Sept. 11 nearly every two months? Sobriety checks being too invasive? The folks in the Washington area didn’t complain when roadblocks were used to look for the sniper.

Barry Rathner
Acton

Well, I for one had serious reservations about the sniper roadblocks. 16,000 per year may seem like a high number, but that’s in a country of 280 million. Your odds of getting killed by a drunk driver stand at .0000143 in 100. MADD has exressed its desire to have enough roadblocks set up so that 1/2 of the US population can be expected to be stopped at some point within a two year period. Remember also that it doesn’t take much to trigger probable cause for a cop to search your car at one of these stops. Maybe your Arab appearance? Maybe he spots some pirated CDs? A bag of weed? I guess the question to ask is, are we ready to turn our cars over to cops for random inspections given a) the .0000143 odds, and, b) the types of people who are likely to get caught at these roadblocks are more likely to be light drinkers who contribute very little to that .0000143 number in the first place?

I think the question answers itself.

Balko’s column disparages the efforts of MADD. Balko states that the checkpoints “do little to get dangerous drunks off the road.” I serve as a MADD volunteer at sobriety traffic checkpoints in north Orange County that are conducted by local police. At every stop, drivers are apprehended who are at or above the legal alcohol limit. I have witnessed drivers who could barely stagger to the Breathalyzer test station. I invite Balko to join me at a checkpoint and see for himself that they are effective.

Balko claims that cell phones, fumbling with the stereo and disciplining children are more hazardous than drunk driving. These are obviously bad practices, but they occur for only a few minutes, whereas drunk driving persists for the entire trip.

Floyd Sabins
Fullerton

I’m sure that if you set up enough roadblocks for a long enough period of time that, yes, you will eventually catch quite a few drunks who can “barely stagger to the Breathalyzer.” But at what cost? And if the staggering drunks are the problem, why arrest people who’ve had a few drinks, but who aren’t a threat? The “drunkenness persists for the entire trip” argument is a decent point. But what about sleep deprived drivers? A Dateline NBC study found that drivers significantly deprived of sleep can be as dangerous as drivers with a BAC of .12. If they’re just as much a threat, why aren’t we “getting tough” on sleep-deprived drivers, too? Why aren’t we demanding that truck drivers who drive on 4 hours sleep lose their liscences?

That groups like MADD have chosen to single out and demonize alcohol-impaired drivers even in the face of evidence that other distractions have been proven to be more dangerous shows a bias on the part of these groups against alcohol and social drinking in general.

For more on drunk driving, and on drivers’ rights issues in general, I can’t recommend the National Motorists Association enough. They’ve provided some great background on several opinion pieces I’ve written (like this one, and this one). They’re one of the few groups out there fighting for your rights as a driver, even as the MADDs and anti-SUV crusaders and traffic-camera proponents and HOV-advocates and anti-cell phone Nazis of the world try to take them away.

I’d even recommend a donation.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 15th, 2002 at 10:06 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.