MADD enough to take away your Constitutional rights

Mothers Against Drunk Driving is a group that started, like a lot of other organizations, as a well-meaning effort to combat a significant problem, in this case driving by blasted individuals. In recent years, however, the organization has become quite tiresome in its zeal for forcing all manner of restrictive plans on drivers, plans that have had absolutely zero result despite robbing innocent people of their rights. Their upcoming schemes include:

"frequent enforcement efforts that include sobriety checkpoints"

"Papers, please". Fortunately, these types of Checkpoint Charlie games are illegal in my home state of Minnesota. I have been unlucky enough to be caught in these types of stops while living in other states, and have been forced to wait for up to an hour, all the while doing nothing wrong, and then being forced to prove that fact to an officer.

"Exploration of advanced vehicle technologies through the establishment of a Blue Ribbon panel of international safety experts to assess the feasibility of a range of technologies that would prevent drunk driving."

Means: EACH car sold would have to have some sort of device that would make you prove that you weren't drunk, EACH time you start it. The presumption of innocence is where?

"Mobilization of grassroots support, led by MADD and its 400+ affiliates"

Translation: Give us more money and power. I hate to be cynical, but one has to wonder if groups such as this ever truly want the problem to be solved, as they will then become irrelevant and have to go away.

"Full implementation of current alcohol ignition interlock technologies, including efforts to require alcohol ignition interlock devices for all convicted drunk drivers. A key part of this effort will be working with judges, prosecutors and state driver’s license officials to stop the revolving door of repeat offenders"

Is it seemly for a lobbying group to directly pressure the justice system? I thought that was the job of the public, through the legislative and executive branches. The judges can't just change the law unilaterally, although it seems that MADD sure wishes they could.

A chilling case in point:

I sometimes read The DUI Blog, written by an attorney, Lawrence Taylor, who details how freedoms are gradually being lost in the name of "safety". He had an interesting encounter with the CEO of MADD, Charles Hurley, in an recent interview taped for NPR. Mr. Taylor questioned Mr. Hurley as to why all of the laws passed in the last 12 years or so haven't reduced the rate of drunk driving at all. Hurley's answer is disturbingly frank:

"The reason for the continuing fatalities, Mr. Hurley calmly explained, is that defense lawyers are more concerned with their clients’ constitutional rights than with their clients’ victims."

Chew on that awhile. I'd guess we could get the murder rate down, as well, by applying Mr. Hurley's logic to accused murderers. No rights for accused people = more convictions!!

Ironically, in a followup post, Mr. Taylor notes that he is actually mistaken - the DUI rate has actually gone UP, despite all of the changes that MADD has sought and gotten in recent years.

I don't drink and drive. I certainly don't want to be on the road with a drunk driver, and I think that anyone who does so and kills an innocent victim should be jailed for years, and never be allowed to drive again. I'm not willing, however, to give up all of my rights to be certain of never being hit by a drunk, because IT WILL NEVER WORK. In a world where DVD encryption is hacked within days of being released, any kind of mechanical contraption will be easily defeated, and we will have spent billions of dollars on another failed try at controlling human behavior through laws, which has been proven time and again cannot be done. See also: The War on Drugs. We're really making progress there, aren't we?

I don't pretend to have all of the answers, especially for a difficult topic such as this. I do know, though, that Big Brother and the Nanny State is never the answer for any issue, as it consistently erodes individual rights, even as it always fails to resolve the problem.