Back in the '70's my father drove drunk. He got pulled over by a cop. The police officer took his license and registration, went back to his cop car to radio it. When he returned, my father had passed out. The cop opened the door, and my father apparently spilled out onto the road. When the cop finally woke my father again he said, "I think I better follow you home." That was it.
I've heard countless stories like this from the baby-boomer generation. And they're a mixed bag. Some make me think, "Holy smokes, thank goodness you didn't kill anyone," but others make me think, "Thank God you didn't do that today!"
Drunk driving is no joke. And, driving back in the late 60's and early 70's didn't see nearly the amount of congestion, nor large highways with high speed as today. Furthermore attitudes were different. I think there's a little wiggle room, where we can laugh at a drunk driver in 1973, rather than think he's a manslaughtering maniac out for blood.
My point is that attitudes (along with driving conditions) have changed dramatically about drunk driving in just 30-40 short years. It's a lot faster than attitudes about race, sexuality, and even basic rights have developed in the last 50-some thousands of years BC.
The MADD campaign has worked. But has it worked to our benefit? I paid over 30k dollars, lost my job, have a criminal record, lost my girlfriend, and went into a deep depression for years because I had the audacity to sleep off a .10 in the parking lot. My crime? I slept with the keys in my pocket, when I needed to hide them outside the vehicle somewhere.
While in jail, I met a kid who partied, smoked some pot and asked his friend to drive him home. His friend, who was sober, rolled through a stop sign. Cops pulled him over. The friend had a problem with his license. The only other licensed driver in the car was the stoned guy sitting in the passenger seat. The passenger got a DUI.
My mother's college roommate was awoken in the wee hours of the morning. She had to get up out of bed, go downstairs and answer the door. It was the police. She was being arrested for a DUI. Her daughter's boyfriend was arrested for a DUI using her car. He had a couple glasses of wine over dinner, they went out and did whatever. But, since she knew he had consumed some alcohol and had given him permission to drive her car, she got a DUI.
MADD is worthwhile. It has dramatically changed how we think about DUIs. And I think that's good. But, it;s been so fast and so profitible, I don't think it takes things case by case, which is bad. I'm considered a monster because I have a DUI, when I tried to do the right thing - as are many. And that's pretty sick. It's like that prohibition nut who smashed up bars back in the day. Just black and white. Drunk driving, while horrible, can be, in same cases much more nuanced that just being an asshole.