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After 25 years, MADD leaders concerned about complacency

WASHINGTON - When a grieving mother started a grass-roots group in 1980, alcohol mixed with driving was killing more than 70 people a day but receiving little national attention.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving made it personal. Focusing on the stories of victims and their families, MADD quickly spread into more than 300 communities, helped persuade Congress to raise the drinking age and ended up getting the term "designated driver" into the dictionary.

"Twenty-five years ago, drunk driving was the last socially acceptable form of murder in America," said MADD president Glynn Birch, the organization's first male president. "And those pioneers of MADD set out to change that."

The advocacy group celebrated 25 years on Thursday with a rally on Capitol Hill, saying it has helped save 300,000 lives. It said it aims to keep cutting the number of drunken driving deaths and will form stronger alliances with law enforcement and push for higher seat belt use.

Still, the organization says it's fighting a feeling among Americans that the issue is no longer so important.

"The nation has become complacent," said Birch, who became involved with the group in 1988 when his 21-month-old son was killed by a drunken driver. "Back in the early '80s we had this grass-roots organization that was flaring up. This was a voice that you had to listen to."

In 1982, more than 26,000 people were killed in drunken driving crashes, and alcohol played a role in about 60 percent of highway fatalities. Drunken driving was punishable with fines and sometimes shrugged off by the legal system.

The group's founder, Candace Lightner, said she still shudders at the memory of a California Highway Patrol officer telling her the drunken driver who killed her 13-year-old daughter probably would not receive a stiff penalty. The driver was a repeat offender with a history of drunken driving arrests.

Infuriated, Lightner, mounted a nationwide campaign that helped push Congress to set aside federal highway funds for anti-drunken driving efforts and then to pass legislation in 1984 to raise the federal minimum drinking age to 21.

By 2004, the most recent data available, the number of drunken driving deaths had dropped to nearly 17,000 a year and alcohol factored into about 40 percent of deadly crashes.

The organization notes that the number of drunken driving deaths has made little downward movement in recent years. About 45 people are killed and nearly 700 injured daily because of drunken drivers.

Some have questioned MADD's direction. Lightner, who parted ways with the organization in the mid 1980s, says MADD has failed to focus enough on its core mission.

"You don't hear about it any more - you don't hear the victims' stories any more," Lightner said.

[Last modified September 30, 2005, 01:37:04]