Credit Anheuser-Busch InBev and ad agency Momentum Worldwide for finding a heartstring-tugging way to discourage impaired driving. (Here's a short Ad Age article on the commercial.) It contrasts sharply with the standard, heavy-handed anti–drunk driving public service message (also via YouTube):
This has me wondering, will Budweiser's yellow lab have a detectable effect on drunk driving? That would make it different from other efforts to reduce drunk driving, which have yielded poor results.
Anti–drunk driving groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving often point out that drunk-driving fatalities have fallen dramatically in recent decades, suggesting their groups' efforts benefit the public. But while it's true that drunk driving fatalities have fallen, it's also true that other motor vehicle fatalities have fallen, and basically at the same rate. That suggests the drunk driving decline is the result of the same forces as the broader decline in highway fatalities—forces that include improved highway design and car design.
Empirical policy research likewise finds surprisingly small (if any) public benefits from MADD-advocated policies like raising the legal drinking age to 21, lowering the blood-alcohol content threshold for a drunk driving charge to 0.08, and "zero tolerance" laws for alcohol consumption by persons under age 21. One provocative (and tentative) empirical finding is that MADD itself has had no beneficial effect.
I write this not to chastise MADD and fellow groups' intentions, which are unquestionable noble. Rather, I suggest they consider that the heavy-handed policies and messages they typically support may not be nearly as effective (or well-received) as a gentle message about a yellow lab anxiously awaiting his person.
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