Holy shit.
How so? Not doubting you, but just hadn't heard this before.
Some interesting reading.
http://sanleontexas.com/stories/2008-02_The%20MADD_Myth_of_the_DUI_Holocaust/he MADD Myth Of The DUI Holocaust
Driving a motor vehicle while shit faced drunk is a bad idea. There is no disputing that. You should also avoid playing with firearms and power tools while intoxicated. This is simple common sense. However, did you know that more people die from choking on their food every year than are killed by drunk drivers? The true number of innocent people killed by drunk drivers is about the same as the number who drown annually in swimming pools, or die in ATV accidents. It is in fact a tiny number.
Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) have cited an average of 25,000 alcohol-related traffic deaths per year. This figure is an intentional, self-serving, politically motivated lie. This can be seen in definitions and national numbers from NHTSA’s own publications:
The phrase “Alcohol-related” means that at least one of the participants in a traffic accident had consumed a “measurable amount” of alcohol, or an alcohol container is found in any of the vehicles involved. If 30 people in a Greyhound Bus die in a crash, and one passenger has a liquor bottle in their luggage, this is an alcohol-related crash! So, when you hear that “40% of fatal traffic accidents are alcohol related”, you’re hearing a false number.
Many accidents include passengers, the other driver, and pedestrians. All of these people must have zero alcohol intake in order to make the accident non-alcohol related. If any one of them has the smallest trace of alcohol, the whole accident is called “alcohol related”.
But wait, it gets worse. Lumped together in the term “alcohol related” is all drugs, including prescribed medication! If there is a prescription bottle for Xanax, a “roach” in the ashtray, a package of rolling papers, or anything else that can be construed as drug-related, the accident goes into the 40% category - even if the drugs are found on a passenger or pedestrian! So, since most elderly Americans are taking some type of prescription medication, their unfortunate traffic deaths become a significant part of these phony statistics.
The numbers are lies but the results are very real - laws such as the confiscation and sale of cars for drunk driving, “implied consent” laws, “sobriety checkpoints” and no right to a jury trial if arrested on federal land (which is 21% of the total and growing.)
Here are the real numbers:
There are about 35,000 fatal traffic accidents each year in the United States. About 40,000 people die each year in these accidents. 60% of these accidents are single-vehicle. 80% of these are drivers or passengers, 5% are motorcyclists, and 15% are pedestrians. Fatal accidents comprise one half of one percent of all reported traffic accidents.
Here’s the logical meltdown of the fictitious 40% figure:
More than 2/3 of traffic deaths are single vehicle crashes, so now we’re down to 13%. Out of these 13%, 60% are accidents in which no person involved had a blood alcohol level over .08, so now we’re at 5%. Over 1/3 of these cases are drug related, not alcohol related, which leaves us at 3%. Half of these remaining cases were caused by road conditions, weather, and sober drivers making errors, which puts us at 1.5%. So, we can say that about 1.5% of traffic fatalities are caused by alcohol-impaired drivers. The other 98.5% are caused by other things, like talking on cell phones. Instead of 25,000 the true number is about 600 innocent people killed annually by drunk drivers. Of course it’s sad those innocent people died. But one might compare that number to the 2,000 children, most age 4 and younger, who die every year due to abuse or neglect. Or compare it to the 180,000 who die from negligence in hospitals per year. Those are all big numbers, but again, there are 300 million people living in the United States.
How drunk is drunk? USA Today states that a .08 blood alcohol content is “reached by a 120-pound woman who has 2 glasses of wine in 2 hours, or by a 160-pound man who has 3 drinks in 2 hours.” People tend to forget that when the definition of drunk was dropped to .08, “impaired” was reduced to .05 - that’s a shot and a beer - or essentially “zero tolerance.” From .05 to .08, the police may arrest you at their own discretion and charge you with DUI. That means everyone who stops at a bar is subject to arrest. If these people constituted an actual threat of imminent danger to the community, it would be all to the good. But they don’t. They’re just regular folks like you and me. There is no evidence that persons below .12 constitute any danger at all. And that is the real problem. When virtually everyone who drives away from a pub or restaurant is subject to criminal arrest - that’s a police state. When a car and a drivers license can be confiscated before trial, that’s a police state.
The number of people arrested in the tiny hamlet of Kemah, Texas each year is greater than the number of innocent fatalities caused by drunk drivers in the entire United States.
To beef up revenues, police agencies unleash special squads to target “impaired” drivers. The suspect is shackled, his car is ransacked, he’s searched and tossed in the patrol car, then photographed, fingerprinted, thrown in a cage, and if he declined to submit to an alcohol test, he may be strapped down, have needles plunged into his body and have blood extracted from his veins. And then, even if that person is found Not Guilty, he will spend hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars for the repugnant experience. Once arrested these otherwise law-abiding citizens are subjected to imprisonment; huge fines and court costs; costs of probation; unjust property forfeitures; made to attend political re-education meetings; psychological testing; involuntary forced labor; public humiliation; loss of driving privileges; loss of jobs; self esteem; and destruction of their families. All because of lies - a witch hunt. “If one life can saved, then it’s worth it,” say the MADD mothers. This scenario happens about 2 million times every year in America.
If you’ve read this far, you’ve seen enough to realize that the “war on drunk drivers” is not being waged solely against drinking drivers who are merely pawns in a much larger game: This is a war against alcohol. Over the past decade, there’s been a reported gradual decline in “alcohol-related” fatal traffic accidents. MADD is taking credit, and many are mindlessly giving it to them. What they don’t mention is that there has been a gradual decline in ALL traffic deaths, not just “alcohol related”. I bet it has more to do with anti-lock brakes, safety inspections, and air bags. The only thing MADD can rightfully take credit for is the wanton vandalism of the Bill of Rights and for inflicting chaos upon the lives of millions of drivers who have harmed no one but have nevertheless been dragged through hell.
There is no indication that MADD’s agenda has accomplished anything in years. Their initial mission, to remove chronic alkies from the roads, was accomplished over a decade back. Since then they have become ineffective - but they have too much money and political clout to simply fade away. So they are now into preventing “date rape”, raising taxes, and supporting gun control laws - issues that have nothing to do with drunk driving.
