MADD effective, but never effective enough

Tyler Clarke

Since 1980, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, has effectively spread its message about the dangers of drunk driving around North America. They had a significant role in establishing the American drinking age of 21 in 1984, the same year they added Canada as an affiliate.

MADD’s primary aim is to educate the public on drunk driving issues. Across Manitoba they make multimedia presentations at school assemblies and conduct demonstrations wherein participants stage car accidents, which they claim to have been caused by drunk driving. One such event caused numerous students to break out into tears, worried to death that their friends were involved and injured, or worse, dead.

A question that comes out of all of this is, just how effective is MADD?

Although MADD ranked Manitoba as the best province for tough drunk driving laws, and is an active participant in the community, there are still a significant number of people driving under the influence — and causing death as a result — on the roads of Manitoba.

Since 1982, two years before MADD started in Canada, the number of people who died per year as a result of drunk driving dropped from around 4,100 to around 2,800. MADD estimated that approximately 25,279 lives have been saved since 1982. Although it is impossible to determine exactly how many lives MADD specifically has saved, considering that MADD is the primary anti-drunk driving advocacy group, it must be significant.

Although there was indeed a great improvement over these last 23 years, it seems lately a plateau has been hit. According to CAA Manitoba, there were 2,875 convictions in 1996. “But recent figures indicate a turn for the worse, with the number of convictions exceeding 3,200 in each of the next three years (1997 to 1999).”

No matter how good a job MADD does in warning people about the dangers of drunk driving, there will always be a portion of the population stupid enough to take part in it. This plateau appears to prove this point. Apparently ,there is a small portion of Manitobans with no regard for the safety of themselves or others. Unfortunately, only 3,200 are caught every year. The MADD statistic that one in five young people have driven after using drugs or alcohol is even further evidence of this.

The long-running anti-smoking campaign is illustrative of the difficulties associated with these sorts of campaigns. For years now, diseased lungs and the like have graced the covers of cigarette packages, warning of the consequences of cigarette smoking, but people still smoke.

MADD speaks out against drunk driving, but people still drive drunk. Even with pictures of corpses on liquor bottles, people will still continue to drive drunk.

People are inherently stupid, believing themselves to be invincible. Those who want to drive drunk will never listen to outside forces telling them not to. Those who want to drive drunk will not have read so far into this article. The only way to prevent drunk driving is for smart people to prevent stupid people from driving drunk.

Tyler Clarke is Sports Editor at Over the Edge, the University of North British Columbia student newspaper.