Detroit Free Press Letter Regarding Drunk Driving

[Note: A short excerpt of the following opinion was published by the Detroit Free Press on July 2, 2005. The following is the complete letter submitted to the Free Press. WJM]

No one claims that driving drunk is good. Little surprise there, I think. The horrific Weinstein/Wellinger story underscores why drunk driving is a serious matter. Any unnecessary roadway deaths caused by drunks are too many. But it is legal to drink and drive, and we need to fiercely guard against neo-prohibitionists and those who stand to profit from criminalizing alcohol before they are permitted to dictate how we should all live as our constitutional rights are eroded away.

Unfortunately, the truth is that organizations such as MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) and SADD no longer focus on drunk driving. Instead, these organizations have become anti-alcohol. SADD, formerly known as "Students Against Drunk Driving," has changed its name to "Students Against Destructive Decisions." The bottom-line: Drinking is bad, whether or not you're driving and whether or not you're drunk. The founding president of MADD, Candy Lightner, left the organization because, "It has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I ever wanted or envisioned," she says. "I didn't start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving."

MADD, our state government, and the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have found that distorting the truth about drunk driving paints a more compelling picture for the public. Claiming that 40% of all fatal accidents are “alcohol related” and touting an annual death toll of approximately 17,000 deaths, these organizations are able to lobby for stricter laws and fewer constitutional rights. “Alcohol related” includes drivers, passengers, and pedestrians who have had anything to drink. The truth is that only about 12.8 percent of fatal accidents are caused by drunk drivers. Compare that statistic with a less controversial statistic: Nearly a third of all fatal accidents involve speeding.

The American Medical Association at one time was asked to determine what the legal limit for blood alcohol ought to be, and that organization responded after studying the matter with 0.15 percent. Nothing has changed with the physiology of the human body since that original study, and the bulk of drunk driving accidents still involve drivers with an average blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.17, but we have passed a series of laws making it easier to prosecute otherwise law-abiding people. The first step was lowering the limit to 0.10 percent, and now, with the promise of saving 500 to 600 lives per year, it’s down to 0.08 percent.

Have we saved any lives? No, but we’ve convicted a lot more people.

As the legal BAC limit is driven down, the fines and costs have skyrocketed. When our state government was threatened that if it didn’t lower the legal limit to 0.08 percent we would lose almost a hundred million dollars over four years in federal highway funds, our state legislators opted to change the laws, keep the federal highway funds, and to pass the new “Driver Responsibility Fee” law designed to collect an additional $23 million each year.

Our state legislators have also passed laws to permit police and prosecutors to get paid for their services in prosecuting drunk driving cases. Currently, a Pittsfield township prosecutor in Washtenaw County is attempting to collect nearly $6,000.00 in a case that did not even go to trial. Included in that bill are charges for a police officer that appeared in court at two and one-half times his normal salary, without explanation, and nearly $5,000.00 for the prosecutor’s “attorney fees.” Never in our nation’s history has a prosecutor been permitted to collect fees for prosecuting cases. This hasn’t occurred in bank robbery cases or murder cases or rape cases, but in drunk driving cases the prosecutor is apparently entitled to a bonus.

Finally, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy last fall endorsed a program of seizing cars without court orders on the mere suspicion of driving drunk. The move was unprecedented and contrary to the law that permits vehicle seizures in OWI cases, but local police were promised a share of the proceeds. To date, not a single penny is believed to have been distributed to the crime victim's rights act, one of the intended beneficiaries under the state statute. Instead, the monies have been divvied up between the prosecutor’s office and the police. Again, not a single life was saved, but the cash register bell keeps ringing.

William Maze is the principal attorney at the Maze Legal Group. Additional information is available online at http://www.owidefenselaw.com

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