Criticizing Mothers Against Drunk Driving elicits some strong reactions.
Some people act as if you are actively trying to put drunk drivers behind the wheel. Others remind you of the lives lost in drunk driving accidents or bring up a personal story.
But, a certain group would agree with many criticisms against MADD.
This group includes MADD founder Candice Lightner, the American Institute of Philanthropy and the National Legal Aid & Defender Association.
They all agree that Mothers Against Drunk Driving is founded on a solid purpose — to get drunk drivers off of the road. But the organization itself is not beyond reproach.
The MADD Web site tells the story of how Lightner came to found the organization after her young daughter was tragically killed by a drunk driver.
Matt Smith is a mathematics sophomore from Phoenix, Arizona.
Now, when Lightner speaks to CNN or the Moderation Reader regarding the organization that was her brainchild, she refers to it as a “neo-prohibitionist” organization that has lost its focus on safety.
She points out that the vast majority of drunk drivers have blood alcohol content greater than .17, far above the .08 legal limit that MADD is lobbying for in Washington.
Lightner’s conviction that it is ineffective to relentlessly lower the BAC requirements most likely stems from the fact that the man who killed her daughter is still on the road, even though he has been convicted of seven DWIs.
The MADD Web site is filled with statistics. MADD’s favorite statistic is the steady drop in highway fatalities since 1980, the year in which MADD began heavy campaigning for tougher drunk driving laws, a national legal drinking age of 21 and the use of federal highway funds to blackmail states into cooperating with the federal government.
It points out that during its 20-year existence, alcohol-related highway fatalities have declined.
But the MADD Web site neglects to mention that highway fatalities since the 1970s have been steadily declining. Cars are getting safer with airbags, better seatbelts and the like, seatbelt laws are being enforced and the physical highways themselves are getting safer.
The second statistic that turns heads — as well as raises eyebrows — is the number of alcohol-related traffic deaths per year. That figure was listed at 17,448 in 2001.
According to an article published by the National Legal Aid & Defender Association, that figure is “estimated by a complex mathematical model that uses variables such as driver age, time of crash and gender.”
The article then whittles away at that number, subtracting drunk pedestrians killed by sober drivers, single-car accidents and accidents without legally drunk drivers.
In the end, the statistic is estimated to be close to 5,000 sober individuals killed by legally drunk drivers.
MADD presents its statistics as if they were beyond question, when in fact it is manipulating figures and neatly ignoring the numbers that would detract from its cause.
The American Institute of Philanthropy has given MADD consistently low grades — a D-plus in 1997 and a C-minus in 2002.
It spends the majority of its time in “self-perpetuating fund-raising efforts,” according to a guidebook that the AIP publishes.
This puts MADD squarely in the rank of least effective organizations that the AIP monitors.
The simple fact is that Mothers Against Drunk Driving is not pursuing its stated goal in an effective or reasonable fashion.
As Lightner says, the group is pushing ineffective laws. The statistics it uses are distorted and it spends more time congratulating itself and fund raising than getting drunks off of the road.
