One notes when examining the timeframe of the graph you linked that MADD was formed in 1980. That explains the legislative inventiveness; nothing drives policy like fat stacks of nonprofit cash! Take a trip to any courthouse anywhere, and you'll witness the racket that MADD, prosecutors, and municipalities have engineered to employ lawyers by depriving the poor of the mobility that would make their lives easier.
So thanks for the info; clearly the answer to my question is "yes".
> nothing drives policy like fat stacks of nonprofit cash
Oh yes, that well funded concerned mother lobby. Fucking it up for sociopathic assholes since 1980.
...can't require safety inspections for aircraft, gotta wait for a bunch of people to fall out of the sky first!
Don't tell any enterprising nonprofit interest-group enthusiasts, but we have "special" and "experimental" airworthiness certificates, which amount to basically that. Of course, those certificates don't cover aircraft which are naturally subject to the regulation of the state.
Oh yes, that well funded concerned mother lobby.
In fiscal year 2012-3, they spent $34,327,399, of which they spent 64.4% on actual programs. Nationally, 9 out of 10 charities spend a higher percentage. [0]
Fucking it up for sociopathic assholes since 1980.
As I have observed every one of the five or six days I've spent in various courthouses over the last five years (and as any practicing lawyer with a conscience surely has observed much more often), these laws do far more to harm the poor than they do to make the roads safe. Perhaps you've heard about protests in Ferguson, MO? Predatory policing and prosecution was one of the main focuses of that.
[0] http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary...
Isn't that the way the judicial system typically works even when it is obviously broken? Isn't this the reason we have things like weird laws that are "unenforceable", because as a matter of policy we tend to wait for actual harm to occur before we expend effort to address it?
>can't require safety inspections for aircraft, gotta wait for a bunch of people to fall out of the sky first!
That's actually the way the FAA came into existence. The Wright brothers didn't have to send $5.00 to the FAA for a permit, or submit to safety inspections, or anything like that. Nor did anyone else, for a long time WRT the early aircraft industry in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Administratio...
>Oh yes, that well funded concerned mother lobby. Fucking it up for sociopathic assholes since 1980.
There's the appeal to emotion common to arguments in favor of harsher sentencing for DUI offenders. It appears to be the case however that more and bigger sticks aren't really reducing the number of sociopathic assholes driving drunk.