OPINION: Put alcohol-interlock devices in every new car

Since 2002, about 5,500 American military personnel have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In that same span, 120,000 Americans were killed in alcohol-related traffic accidents, about 500 of them on Long Island.

That staggering figure was brought home locally by two wrong-way accidents last week in which alcohol is believed to have been a factor, and the guilty plea of a 24-year-old man Mondaywho killed a police officer in Commack while driving drunk.

Yet the technology exists to all but end drunken driving.

Why not put an alcohol interlock device on every new car, keeping it from starting if the driver is legally drunk and shutting it down if the operator can't occasionally provide clean exhales midtrip?

Driving drunk is not a civil liberty, and other than Crazy Phil down at The Tipsy Tavern, no one would argue it is.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving last week asked Congress to devote $60 million to the development of less intrusive technology that would keep cars from operating when the driver is above the legal blood-alcohol limit of .08. The funding has bipartisan support.

MADD chief executive Kimberly Earle said the group supports interlock devices for everyone convicted of driving while intoxicated now, and seeks a less invasive technology, as an option on new cars, that would keep them from operating for drunken drivers.

But why not interlocks for every new car, immediately?

It sounds crazy, but didn't mandatory seat belts once sound crazy? Didn't pancake batter in a spray can once . . . actually, that's still maniacal.

It's true that the nanny-state mentality is often off base. It can reasonably be argued that we have the right to poison ourselves with tobacco, tan ourselves cancer-ridden and fatten ourselves to Oompa Loompa dimensions via snacks whose names include the word "Doodle." It cannot reasonably be argued that people have the right to drive without exhaling into a tube - though it's fun to imagine hearing lawyers try.

Lawyer: "Your honors, my client can't be compelled to exhale."

Justice Antonin Scalia: "Your client does not exhale?"

Lawyer: "Not into tubes. It's . . . um . . . a religious thing."

Arguing against interlock devices based on expense has merits, until you dissect it. Mostly used for convicted drunken drivers, they cost about $100 to purchase and install and $50 a month to operate.

That's a lot, but they're so expensive because only 212,000 are now in use nationally. Remember early, rare compact disc players? They cost $3,000 and skipped more than a 9-year-old girl headed home on the last day of school. Now you could pretty much get a CD player free with the purchase of a CD.

Installed in all new cars, alcohol interlock devices would become cheaper. And how much less would car insurance cost if drunken driving stopped?

You must prove competence to get a license. You must prove you've paid taxes and procured insurance. Proving you're sober makes sense, too.

Consider the liberties trampled now. Stopped at a road check, you can be busted for numerous offenses discovered during a grilling police had no probable cause to conduct.

For a libertarian, accepting an alcohol interlock device in return for ending DWI checkpoints is a good trade.

We'll protect nothing by failing to install these devices, lose another 120,000 lives, cost society a fortune and endure heartbreak, all unmarked by the protests that accompany our far less lethal military wars.

We have the right to roads free of drunken drivers, and we should fight for it, no matter how much Crazy Phil down at The Tipsy Tavern whines.