MADD house.

Is Mothers Against Drunk Driving out of control?

Mothers Against Drunk Driving was founded in 1980 by Candy Lightner after a drunken man who had multiple convictions for driving while intoxicated ran down and killed her 13-year-old daughter. MADD quickly helped make drunk driving one of the most heavily combatted social scourges in the nation. But now the group has embarked on a crusade that has even former adherents wondering whether it has gone too far.

Mrs. Lightner herself has quit MADD because she thinks it has become ''overzealous.'' The group is now devoting its energies to putting pressure on state legislatures around the country to lower the permissible Blood Alcohol Content for drivers from .10 to .08. Such a change would not increase safety on the roads, but it would increase the number of supposedly ''drunk'' drivers -- and, hence, the perceived need for MADD. It is a typical story of a well-intentioned lobbying group becoming a self-perpetuating Washington institution.

MADD argues that even ''at .08 BAC, a driver is 16 times more likely to be involved in a crash'' than if he had consumed no alcohol at all. MADD President Karolyn Nunnallee contends that ''many people are dangerously impaired at even .05 BAC'' (about the level most people would have after one beer on an empty stomach). MADD recently sought to have Congress force the .08 standard on all the states --sixteen already have it -- by incorporating language into the recently passed Transportation Bill that would have tied distribution of federal highway dollars to adoption of .08 BAC. The provision was killed at the last minute.

Should it have been? Dr. H. Laurence Ross, a professor at the University of New Mexico and author of Confronting Drunk Driving, points out that ''the potential of alcohol to impair drivers and cause accidents is directly proportionate to the amount consumed.'' According to Dr. Ross, adoption of the .08 standard has the potential to increase by 60 per cent the number of motorists arrested for ''drunk driving'' -- but without any concomitant decrease in either fatality or accident rates.

Accident statistics show that impairment of driving ability seldom takes place until BAC levels exceed .10. A BAC of .08 or less means there is little enough alcohol in his or her system that it is extremely unlikely to appreciably affect coordination, reaction times, vision, or judgment in a normal person. The man who killed Candy Lightner's daughter had a BAC of .20 -- and most of the weaving drunks pulled over by cops have BAC levels above .10.

The evidence confirms this at every turn: -- In 1996, more than 62 per cent of all traffic fatalities considered to be ''alcohol-related'' were the work of drivers with BAC levels above .14 -- almost twice the .08 level. -- According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, fatality rates don't go up appreciably until you get above .10 BAC. -- A study by the Harvard Injury Control Center found that 67 per cent of those drivers who were killed in automobile accidents after drinking had BAC levels of .15 or higher. -- Fewer deaths occur in accidents involving drivers with BACs between .08 and .09 than involving those with BACs between .01 and .03, which is cough-syrup territory.

''MADD's number-one priority is to lower the arrest threshold for DWI to .08 -- even though this level makes it illegal for a 120-pound woman to drive after consuming just two glasses of wine over the course of two hours,'' says Rick Berman of the Alcohol Beverage Institute, the lobbying arm of the liquor industry, which played a critical role in stripping the .08 language from the Transportation Bill.

As Michael Fumento, a veteran writer on scientific subjects, puts it, ''Even advocates of the .08 BAC limit admit that drivers below the .10 level rarely drive erratically; hence the only way to catch them is by putting up more police roadblocks and doing more random breath testing.'' Apart from harassing innocent drivers who have had a glass of wine or two over dinner, this has the pernicious side effect of diverting police away from patrolling the highways, where they might spot and pull over genuinely dangerous drunks, Fumento argues.

BUT MADD marches on, arguing that drunk drivers are responsible for 40 to 50 per cent of all highway fatalities. In this, MADD operates in collusion with the NHTSA, which misleadingly defines as ''alcohol-related'' all traffic fatalities where any trace level of alcohol -- no matter how small -- is discovered in the bloodstream of any person involved in the accident, even if it's not the driver.

The NHTSA is working hard in the campaign to lower BAC standards, even if it means playing fast and loose with the evidence. James Fell, the NHTSA's chief of research and evaluation at the time, testified in January before a committee of the Minnesota House that was considering legislation to lower Minnesota's threshold for drunk-driving arrests from .10 to .08 BAC. Fell claimed that the state of California had experienced a 12 per cent reduction in alcohol-related fatalities after it adopted the .08 BAC threshold.

But it turns out that that figure was a prediction made by a consultant in favor of the .08 limit. In fact, following the implementation of the .08 BAC threshold, California's alcohol-related deaths declined 6.1 per cent -- slightly less than the country-wide decline of 6.3 per cent over that same period.

One definite effect of lowering the standard, as Dr. Ross points out, would be more arrests. For MADD, that would justify more lobbying, more contributions, more PR campaigns, more business for itself. ''Like any successful firm,'' says Rick Berman, ''MADD has recognized an iron rule: Revenue must exceed expenses. The tale of the tape is unmistakable.'' Indeed, MADD enjoyed a cash flow of $45.5 million in 1994. It has become one of the most powerful, well-funded, and omnipresent lobbying groups in the country.

For this success to continue, the battle against drunk driving can never appear to be won. And the need for new laws can never seem to be sated. Candy Lightner puts it mildly: ''I worry that the movement I helped create has lost direction.''

Mr. Peters is a nationally syndicated automotive columnist; he may be reached at [e-mail] on the Internet.