DESIGNATED DRIVER CAMPAIGN WORKING

New Ads, Familiar Refrain Help Level Deaths

BOSTON (AP) The refrain is by now so familiar it seems like it's been
part of the lexicon forever: Don't drink and drive.

Yet it was only a decade ago that the socalled designated driver campaign
began. And with it, America's social conscience shifted gears.

Since the campaign started in 1988, drunken driving deaths on American
roads have dropped by more than 25 percent, from 23,628 in 1988 to 17,126
last year.

Much of the reduction is the result of stricter laws enacted over the past
10 years, highway safety experts said. For one, the drinking age is now 21
in every state.

But a good part of the drop also can be attributed to the basic refrain: If
you're going to drink, use a designated driver.

The nation's major television networks currently are broadcasting a new
30second message by President Clinton urging Americans to use a designated
driver. The Harvard University School of Public Health created the campaign.

This year, besides the plea to drink in moderation and choose a
nondrinking designated driver, Clinton says in the spot: "Be sure everyone
in your car uses a seat belt."

It's not by chance that this addition comes three months after the deaths
Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed, who were not wearing seat belts when their
car crashed in Paris. The only survivor, bodyguard Trevor ReesJones, was
properly buckled in the front seat. The driver, Henri Paul, was later found
to be drunk.

The designated driver campaign was devised at a time when the antidrunken
driving movement had begun losing momentum. The success of Mothers Against
Drunk Driving, or MADD, which began in the early 1980s, was leveling off.
Media attention had shifted elsewhere, and the decrease in alcoholrelated
traffic deaths had leveled off.

Enter Harvard's designated driver concept, modeled after an initiative in
Scandinavia.

Soon after its inception, public service announcements were aired as often
as 20 times a week, and popular television shows from Cheers to The
Cosby Show incorporated the message into their scripts. By 1991, the
term was included in the Random House Webster's College Dictionary.

In the 10 years since the project began, an estimated 38,000 lives have
been saved, said Jay Winsten, director of Harvard's Center for Health
Communication.

But the numbers have leveled off again. Since 1992, alcohol related
fatalities have hovered in the 17,000 range, according to the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA.

And while 73 million Americans say they have either served as a designated
driver or been driven home by one, that number has remained constant since
1992, Winsten said.

For a soontobepublished study, Winsten and his colleagues at Harvard
found some encouraging statistics among college students traditionally
the group at greatest risk for drunken driving and binge drinking.

Using 1993 data, Winsten and colleague William DeJong analyzed surveys of
more than 17,000 students.

Among drinkers, 36 percent said they had served as a designated driver in
the previous 30 days. Of those, 53 percent said they did not consume any
alcohol the last time they were designated to drive.

An additional 26 percent of designated drivers had just one drink before
driving, while 19 percent said they had more but did not binge drink,
defined as five drinks in an hour for the average male, or four for the
average female.

The survey results show the effect of the designated driver message is "not
perfect, but it's working pretty well," Winsten said.

Still, many people mistakenly believe that designated drivers are people
who just drink less than everybody else, said Jim Hedlund of the NHTSA.

NHTSA has set a goal of reducing alcoholrelated traffic deaths to 11,000
by the year 2005. Emphasizing the designated driver campaign and its
proper meaning is just part of that, Hedlund said.

His agency also advocates lowering the legal blood alcohol driving limit to
0.08 percent, as 15 states have already done, along with stricter enforcement.

More measures are needed, including mandatory treatment programs and
license and vehicle confiscation for repeat offenders, said Ralph Hingson,
chairman of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department at Boston
University School of Public Health.

"We can't sort of assume that we've got the legislation in place and that
will handle the problem," he said.