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| Outside U.S. DOT Headquarters: a sign warning people not to drive drunk. Inside: $1.8 billion in withheld transit funds. (Photo by me) |
It’s
the first weekend of college football season, and teams, knowing that a single
loss could end their national championship chances, are striving to find their
midseason form on Day 1. While
watching Cal barely hold off a lousy North Carolina team yesterday, I also struggled
to rediscover my ability – to quickly find a backup game and avoid viewing any
commercials, that is.
At one point, I’d failed to keep advertisements off my
TV, and things quickly went from bad to worse when a public service announcement
from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) – part of
Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow Elaine Chao’s Department of Transportation –
filled the screen.
Hopes
that DOT was finally announcing which transit projects will receive its $1.8 billion in withheld federal
funds faded quickly, as burning cars filled the screen. But the PSA did
accurately portray one of the auto industry’s biggest failures: the fact that their
mode is useless if you want to have a couple beers. As a drunk driver pouted in
the back of a police car, the PSA reminded viewers to “drive sober or get
pulled over.”
But can an
agency that’s choosing to withhold nearly two billion dollars appropriated to
transit improvements, for no
apparent reason, really say they are committed to reducing drunk driving?
It
seems Chao is doing her best to perpetuate the bizarre dichotomy of America’s
quixotic effort to fight drunk driving without fighting auto-dependency. Chao
gets away with her hypocrisy because many people see drunk driving as solely a
substance abuse issue, rather than as a transportation issue.
The
history of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the organization founded
by Candace Lightner (the mother of a girl struck and killed by a drunk driver
just outside my hometown of Sacramento) that has come to be the face of America’s
effort to eliminate driving under the influence, illustrates the root of this
problem.
Relatively speaking, drunk driving laws are
quite lenient in America
I’ll
give MADD credit where it’s due. First and foremost, the organization’s support for victims
of drunk driving crashes is heroic and honorable. Also, the MADD website refers to car crashes accurately,
as crashes, rather than calling them “accidents.”
But
on the policy side, MADD has served only to further entrench car culture in our
society.
To
start, MADD’s greatest legislative victory, achieved just four years after its
1980 founding, has nothing to do with traffic safety. Instead, all the National
Minimum Drinking Age Act did was ensure 18-to-20 year olds consume alcohol
only in unregulated
environments where sexual predators can easily spike
peoples’ drinks without consequences. It appears the organization forgot not
only that many 18-to-20 year olds live on or near college campuses, which tend
to have
relatively good multimodal transportation options, but also that the driver who
killed Lightner’s daughter was 46
years old.
When
it comes to actual drunk driving laws, on the other hand, the U.S. still lacks
teeth relative to the rest of the developed world, in spite of MADD’s talk.
Unless you’re in Utah,
where the 3.2 beer makes it tough to get any kind of a buzz, you can drive
legally in America with a blood alcohol content of up to .08%, or as many as five drinks
for some people.
In many
other countries, including soju-loving South Korea,
the legal alcohol limit for driving is .05%. (A note here: I’ve never driven a
car in Korea, but I’ve seen DUI checkpoints there. I’ve never seen one in the
U.S.). In Russia the legal limit
is 0.035%, so if you happen to be in Moscow or Irkutsk, want to try some vodka,
and don’t want to wind up in a Putin jail, take transit.
The auto and oil industry has successfully
avoided any responsibility for drunk driving in America
A
quick look at MADD’s sponsors
may help explain the organization’s failure to promote any legislation that
would actually prevent people from driving after they drink.
Car
companies (including GM and Mercedes), oil companies (including ARCO and BP),
auto insurance companies (including State Farm, Nationwide, and GEICO), and other auto industry organizations (including AAA and the Georgia Automobile Dealers
Association) dominate MADD’s list of sponsors. Major donors also include Uber
and Waymo, giving the ride hailing-autonomous vehicle crowd a strong presence
at MADD’s table. MADD even directly sells
used cars to raise funding, no ignition interlock system included.
Interestingly,
it appears no alcohol companies sponsor MADD, even though those companies would
likely have a better reputation if people didn’t drive after they drink.
Though
MADD has never advocated for transit improvements such as extended
nighttime service hours, they’ve wholeheartedly embraced the ride hailing
companies that sponsor them. This, even though people with DUIs on their
records regularly
pass TNC background checks, it’s far
from clear that ride hailing reduces drunk driving, and the apps may
actually make roads more dangerous since ride hailing drivers must use their phones to do their jobs.
As
for the “designated
drivers” MADD advocates for, it’s nice to wish that a friend or family
member will accompany you for a night of bar-hopping without imbibing or will
show up at 2am to pick you up. I also think it would be nice if the Koch
Brothers become transit advocates, but I understand that it’s not going to
happen. Even if you do manage to find a DD, remember that more than two-thirds
of fatal car crashes don’t involve alcohol impairment.
There are opportunities for tangible
progress, but MADD is nowhere to be seen
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| San Diego's Green Flash Brewing is served directly by MTS's Route 921 bus. The problem: transit riders hoping to order a pint of West Coast IPA must walk around the brewery building, then through the giant parking lot in the foreground. Thanks, parking minimums, for encouraging drunk driving! (Photo courtesy of TripAdvisor) |
MADD,
based in the Dallas suburb of Irving, TX at an address on the East John
Carpenter Freeway, hasn’t done
anything about the fact that Arlington, TX – another Metroplex suburb – is once
again the country’s most populous city that completely lacks transit
service. Nor the fact that AT&T Stadium, the Arlington-based home of the
Dallas Cowboys, earns
the most alcohol revenue of any licensed liquor retailer in Texas, even during
the NFL offseason. (This
picture of the stadium makes it clear how fans typically get to and from the
boozy venue).
Bars,
breweries, wineries, and distilleries often face
high parking minimums even in places that are accessible by transit. This forces licensed establishments to subsidize car storage for patrons who choose to
drive after they drink. No word from MADD on this, of course.
And according
to Google Street View the intersection
of Sunset and New York Avenues in Fair Oaks, CA, where Lightner’s daughter was
killed 38 years ago, still lacks crosswalks, sidewalks, and bike lanes. Any
brave soul who manages to reach a Sacramento Regional Transit bus stop on this
stretch of Sunset faces a rude awakening, as signs indicate there is “temporarily”
no bus service on the road.
The
streets of Fair Oaks – and of so much of America – are not safe for anyone,
sober or drunk.
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