And there's definitely something to be said about established party powers holding sway over policy. But as we've seen recently with the Tea Party: the established power in a political party can find itself very quickly out of power, should it ignore the policy preferences of a motivated voting bloc.
You find that article persuasive? I find the essays from Reason to be, well, not well-reasoned.
Consider this quote: "Once the 0.08 standard took effect nationwide in 2000, a curious thing happened: Alcohol-related traffic fatalities increased, following a 20-year decline. Critics of the 0.08 standard predicted this would happen." It has a link for you to verify, but that's to a Cato ("libertarian think tank") essay from 2005. The Cato publication in turn refers to an increase in overall deaths, but doesn't say how large the increase is, nor if there are any other reasons which might cause the increase.
Since the Reason article was written in 2010, you'd think they would see if the predicted upward trend was more than a statistical anomaly. Go to http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811402.pdf and look at Figure 1 in Chapter 1. You'll see the trend went up, until 2005, and then dropped. The number of deaths in 2009 is about 4,000 less than the pre-2000 low of 34,942.
This means the trend hasn't continued, and the critics' prediction is wrong, so the foundation of this aspect of the argument does not exist.
This was pretty simple research (I think I spent 10 minutes to find that publication), so it's poor scholarship to use an outdated, secondary source, especially if it can appear that you've cherry picked that source.
Or take this example of what's considered a legitimate behavior: "Imagine a driver pulled over or stopped at a checkpoint after having "one for the road," knowing his house is a short drive away and the last drink won't kick in until he's sitting on his couch." That makes little sense to me. (Okay, the concept of "one for the road" doesn't make sense to me either.)
You've got, what, 5 minutes until the alcohol starts to affect you and 30 minutes until the BAC is at its max? Since "one for the road" happened when that person was inside, who needs to say goodbye, get out to the car, etc. then I'll call it 15 minutes until the alcohol starts to impair driving. There's very little margin of error: what do you do if you get a flat or you get out to the car to discover you've left the lights on and it needs a jump start? What about road construction, or if the lights are against you?
(Of course if you're less than a mile away I would say to just walk home.)
So I just don't see that as being a reasonable counter-argument.
To be clear, I'm not wild about Reason and my position wasn't made or particularly aligned with the argument in that article.
But I didn't feel like typing a three-thousand word essay and that article covers many of the problems and was fairly easy to find.
I'm also not out to persuade anyone. If you're not convinced, cheers. But at least be aware of the technical limitations of the breathalyzer, the liberties being infringed by drunk driving checkpoints and mandatory breathalyzer and blood tests and the punishments that begin at accusation or assertion of your rights, rather than after due process.
I agree with many of those points. The problem I have is that article contains enough suspicious information that it's easy for a reader to assume the other points are cherry-picked in order to justify a specific political viewpoint.
In other words, it isn't convincing and I don't think it's a good link for this context. Others might be:
And there's definitely something to be said about established party powers holding sway over policy. But as we've seen recently with the Tea Party: the established power in a political party can find itself very quickly out of power, should it ignore the policy preferences of a motivated voting bloc.