Court Opinion

ID: 9432064
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:34:07.62029+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:32.107106
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
concurring in the judgment.
I concur only in the judgment.
I fully agree with the Court’s lamentations about the slaughter on our highways and about the dangers posed to almost everyone by the driver who is under the influence of alcohol or other drug. I add this comment only to remind the Court that it has been almost 20 years since, in Perez v. *456Campbell, 402 U. S. 637, 657 (1971), in writing for three others (no longer on the Court) and myself, I noted that the “slaughter on the highways of this Nation exceeds the death toll of all our wars,” and that I detected “little genuine public concern about what takes place in our very midst and on our daily travel routes.” See also Tate v. Short, 401 U. S. 395, 401 (1971) (concurring statement). And in the Appendix to my writing in Perez, 402 U. S., at 672, I set forth official figures to the effect that for the period from 1900 through 1969 motor-vehicle deaths in the United States exceeded the death toll of all our wars. I have little doubt that those figures, when supplemented for the two decades since 1969, would disclose an even more discouraging comparison. I am pleased, of course, that the Court is now stressing this tragic aspect of American life. See ante, at 451.