Charles Hurley’s recent nomination to the NHTSA. (Chicago DUI News: MADD Official To Lead NHTSA) has brought the NHTSA a lot of attention. The nomination has prompted widespread reaction by those who fear that MADD’s agenda of creating an alcohol-free society has gained even more power.

Check out the opinion piece below for a sampling of the reaction to Hurley’s nomination:

Former MADD chief will steer NHTSA wrong

By Eric Peters

The nomination of anti-drinking activist Charles Hurley as head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is an ominous development for both motorists and auto makers.

Hurley, CEO of the public nuisance group Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), may well be the most zealous enemy of individual liberty and the free-market at NHTSA since Joan Claybrook ruled during the Carter Administration.

His nomination on Tuesday sent shudders down the spines of everyone who considers motoring a special part of the joy of being American.
If his prior record is any indication, we can expect more in the way of arbitrary interference with the way the car companies do business at a moment when they can least afford the burden of bureaucratic meddling.

And drivers can expect a ratcheting up of the low-grade harassment they already endure on a daily basis — in the form of more obnoxious regulations, pullover “safety” checks and very possibly lowered speed limits, ala Claybrook’s 55-mph national limit on federal interstates.

All of this will be imposed on states in the time-honored Washington way: Those that fail to comply will lose vitally needed highway funds.

As the head gauleiter of MADD since March 2005, Hurley the led the group — already considered one of the most unreasonable and totalitarian-minded “special interests” in all of D.C. to even new vistas of reactionary Puritanism.

MADD was started by Candy Lightner, a Fair Oaks, California mother in 1980, after her daughter was killed by a drunken speeder in their quiet suburban neighborhood.

Its original mission — a public campaign to make driving drunk unacceptable — has morphed into a crusade against any consumption of alcohol whatsoever.

The legal standard for “drunk” driving has already been lowered to .08 BAC — a level well below the .10 and up level at which people have actual accidents as opposed to running afoul of “sobriety checkpoints.”

But even that isn’t enough. Under Hurley, MADD has been pushing to have the legal threshold reduced to .04 BAC, which would turn anyone who had a glass of wine over dinner into a “drunk driver” as far as the law was concerned — and subject them to penalties more severe than those applied to many violent felons.

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