In the Washington Times, Luke Rosiak exposes the unholy alliance of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the ignition interlock industry.

As House leaders prepare to roll out a massive six-year highway funding bill, among the many interests watching with anticipation are a handful of businesses that have pressed for a requirement that could take them from cottage industry to multimillion-dollar market overnight.

The campaign by the manufacturers of in-car devices to test blood alcohol levels is representative of a particularly successful model of lobbying in which for-profit businesses align with altruistic activist groups to implement government regulations that create a captive market for their products.

Rosiak characterizes this combo as “Baptists and bootleggers,” the extremely effective joining of those seek huge financial gain with those whose interests are, at least superficially, entirely altruistic.  MADD has been monumentally successful in pushing the agenda, and the hardware and software, of drunk driving, though often blindly.  Remember when someone came up with the number .10 blood alcohol content to define in absolute terms what constituted drunk driving?  Remember when it arbitrarily dropped to .08?  Remember when legislators were told that these numbers were plucked out of the air, didn’t actually take into account the various factors that controlled the situation? 

It’s hard to argue against mothers.  It’s hard to face someone with a picture of a dead child, lost to some nefarious stone drunk who was still driving despite 33 priors. 

But the ignition interlock, though certainly an overarching onerous burden, it another solution that reaches far beyond its problem.  There are many questions and issues surrounding it as a means of preventing the death of a child, and there are many reasons why it’s a solution that will do plenty of harm in the process of attempting to prevent a wrong.

MADD doesn’t care.  Anything that has any potential, on the most simplistic level, to stop one child from being killed is good enough for their push.  And the ignition interlock industry, well, they’re not feeling very concerned about making billions either.

“The overwhelming majority of entities that want to regulate in some way are composed of Baptists and bootleggers,” said Peter Van Doren, editor of the quarterly journal Regulation, referring to the two groups that pressed for Prohibition 90 years ago: religious zealots who viewed alcohol as immoral and the gangsters who profited from its illegal status.

Manufacturers are “probably sincere and also making an alliance with Mothers Against Drunk Driving – the mothers would be the Baptists,” he said. “They’re going to them and saying if you mandate this thing, your version of the world will come along, and it just so happens we’ll get rich – but of course they don’t say that part.”

The way this plays out is that Congress uses a highway funding bill to coerce states to require anyone convicted of a drunk driving offense to install an ignition interlock device in their car.  It seems simple enough on its face. This is how Congress forced states to adopt a 55 mph speed limit, but money talks.

To no one’s surprise, there is no lobbying group for drunk drivers.  Not even first time offenders.

But consider the ramifications of forcing states to adopt laws requiring anyone convicted of a drunk driving offense to install an interlock device. There’s the cost, another penalty that many cannot afford. Then there is the technological imperfection, rendering cars inoperable because of a flawed device.  These devices are generally geared toward preventing someone from driving when they blow a lesser amount, say .02-.04, even if they don’t reflect drunkenness, aren’t working properly or confuse other things, such as medicine, for bourbon.

A bigger issue is that cars are operated by more than one person, and the installation on a car affects everyone who drives it, whether they have done anything wrong or not.  What about the drunk who has two cars in the family, and has to install the device on every car he potentially drives?

Even with the device, there is nothing to stop someone else from blowing into the device and then allowing the drunk to take the wheel.  For people who are inclined to actually drive drunk, circumventing protections aren’t that troubling an issue.

Radley Balko takes the position that these devices are understandable for multiple offenders, but less so for first timers.

I’m fine with mandating these devices for repeat offenders. But first-time offenders is too much, especially for someone barely above the too-low legal limit. And I don’t think it’s unreasonable to worry about the possibility that this campaign will expand to demand the devices in all new cars.

He may be a little too accommodating of technological solutions, even for repeat offenders when one considers the non-offenders who will be swept along with this unholy alliance.  Whether it’s the offenders children who have nothing to eat for breakfast as their parent has to pay the monthly interlock device rental, or the husband who can’t get to work because his drunken mother-in-law who uses the car has a defective device, the unintended consequences and ramifications have to be fully considered. 

And what is it about little black boxes that makes us trust them so blindly?  Does this reflect an innate human need to blow?

The problem here is that states will enact these laws upon the threat of losing federal funding, and nobody wants to lose federal funding, while Congress will insert these requirements into funding bills upon the lobbying of Baptists and bootleggers.  What will not happen is that the underlying concept, whether this is actually a good solution to the problem, and whether the unintended consequences of this solution are worth the price, will get a legitimate airing. 

And yet, we may well end up stuck with a future where starting our car means appeasing the MADD scold before hearing the engine crank, and it happened without so much as a discussion.