The one guy is right. You can have a beer or two and be perfectly safe to drive. (Unless you’re my 99lb. wife who hardly ever drinks.)
For those not around, MADD was a force to be reckoned with. I was a kid/teenager in the 80s, who wouldn’t normally have given a shit, but we were well aware of MADD. They were powerful and they were heard. I give them about all the credit.
As to the stats at the end, kinda wishy washy. Deaths dropping despite the huge population increase is eye opening. But vehicles and driving practices became far safer in those years. Crumple zones? No thanks. We rolled tanks. Seat belts were for communists and air bags were considered deadly.
FFS, my parents were very safety minded, but I was napping in the rear-view window deck, hauling ass on the interstate. Not sure I ever wore a seatbelt in the backseat. (And then there was the time I pulled a toy revolver on a Missouri State trooper. LOL, dad had to go downtown and pay that ticket on the spot.)
The 38,000 number is for 2020. Remember that year when we weren’t driving? Car deaths are on par with gun deaths, about 50K per CDC numbers. And one type of violence is rarely random while the other type almost always is. Driving is still pretty scary if you look at it like that.
So I’d hardly give the turnaround on drunk driving all the credit. OTOH, nobody seemed to give a shit before MADD got mad. Young people would be fucking appalled at what attitudes were like in the day.