Like a school kid who completes all of his assignments on time, does well on all of his tests and participates in class but sees his grade drop at the end of the quarter, the organizations that fight drunken driving in Indiana are wondering what they have to do to get a little credit.

Despite the Indiana General Assembly's courageous move this past year to adopt 0.08 percent as the new blood-alcohol standard for drunken driving, despite court decisions declaring that sobriety checkpoints are constitutionally OK, and despite strong leadership from Gov. Frank O'Bannon, Indiana recently saw its grade on impaired-driving prevention drop in the latest Rating the States Survey Report by Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Statewide advocates, and even members of Greater Lafayette's upstart MADD chapter, were scratching their heads at the news that the national MADD organization had dropped the Hoosier grade from B- to C+.

"How much more can we do?" the advocates wondered.

Good question. But here's a more constructive question: How can we be more effective?

Local MADD member Dan Towery, notes that arrests for drunken driving are up, and the slaughter of innocents on Indiana highways continues.

So far this year in the 10-county area covered by the Journal and Courier, 11 people have been killed in 10 crashes caused by drunken or drug-impaired drivers.

In 2001, 11 such crashes caused 12 deaths. Not much improvement there.

Towery points out the "disconnect" between improved public education, enforcement and stricter legislation and the continued increase in offenses, indicating that, on an individual basis, people still aren't getting it.

National statistics also support the "disconnect" theory.

Nationwide, there were 17,448 drunken driving deaths in 2001, up from 16,572 in 1999, the last time MADD conducted its survey. That earned the U.S. a C grade from MADD, down from a C+ in 1999.

And when you consider the highest state grade was a B+ for California, Indiana's C+ doesn't seem terrible.

The fact is that as long as the impaired-driving death toll continues to rise, neither MADD nor anyone else who cares about fighting the problem, can fairly say the situation is improving.

Advocates with the Governor's Task Force on Impaired and Dangerous Driving and local MADD chapters across Indiana shouldn't be discouraged by the latest report card. They should be motivated by it.

Events such as Tuesday night's third annual MADD vigil for relatives and friends of victims of impaired driving go a long way toward humanizing the problem and eliminating the "disconnect."

No one can deny the pervasiveness of the message that it's not OK to drink and drive. The message is being heard. The next task is finding ways to make it sink in.

MADD vigil