Mother

Mother Against Drunk Driving

BSHS/355

August 31, 2015

Pamela Harris

Mother Against Drunk Driving

Mothers against Drunk Driving started as a grass roots citizen activist group and were founded in 1980 (Learn More, n.d.). The founder of MADD, Candice Lightner, created this organization after a drunken hit-and-run driver killed her 13-year-old daughter, Cari, at Sunset and New York Avenues in Fair Oaks, California (Friedrich, 1985). Lightner banded with other mothers who proposed in their hearts to make a stand against factors causing the tragedies associated with alcohol. The overall mission of Mothers Against Drunk Driving is to: stop drunk driving, support the victims of this violent crime and prevent underage drinking (MADD). MADD is very big on educating the public on the dangers and results of drunk driving. They are also huge on advocacy and providing assistance to victims and their loved ones.

In the early 1980s, MADD got the attention of New Jersey Senator Frank R. Lautenberg. Senator Lautenberg did not like the fact that youth in New Jersey would travel into New York to purchase alcoholic beverages, in order to avoid New Jersey's law restricting consumption to those 21 years old and over (MADD Online, 2004). The group had its greatest victory in 1984 with the imposition of National Minimum Drinking Age Act. This federal law introduced a federal penalty for states that did not raise the legal age to purchase and possess alcohol to 21. After the United States Supreme Court upheld the law in the 1987 case of South Dakota v. Dole, every state, with the exception of Puerto Rico and Guam, succumbed by 1988. Tragedies are what encouraged many to join ranks with MADD. One of these tragedies was the school bus crash of 1988. A drunk driver traveling the wrong way caused a head-on collision with a school bus that resulted in the death...