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Candy Lightner: Founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)
by David J. Hanson, Ph.D.
In 1980 Candy Lightner’s 13-year-old daughter Cari was killed by a drunken hit-and-run driver as she walked down a suburban street in California. "I promised myself on the day of Cari’s death that I would fight to make this needless homicide count for something positive in the years ahead” Candy Lightner later wrote.
The drunken driver, who had been found guilty and convicted four times of driving while intoxicated (DWI) before hitting and killing Candy Lightner‘s daughter, received a two-year prison sentence. However, he avoided prison by serving time in a work camp and a halfway house.
The leniency of the sentence outraged Ms. Lightner who then organized Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD), later changed to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The object of her organization was to raise public awareness of the serious nature of drunken driving and to promote tough legislation against the crime.
Before Ms. Lightner’s crusade, intoxication, including drunken driving, was not taken seriously. Some comedians actually made a career of impersonating drunken people on stage. Intoxication was often used as an excuse for otherwise unacceptable behavior: “I didn’t know what I was doing --- I was drunk.”
Candy Lightner appeared on major television shows, spoke before the US Congress, addressed professional and business groups, and worked tirelessly for years to change public attitudes, modify judicial behavior, and promote tough new legislation.
The problem of drunk driving has now primarily been reduced to a "hard core of alcoholics who do not respond to public appeal," according to MADD. 1 Most drivers who have had something to drink have low blood alcohol concentration (BAC) and few are involved in fatal accidents or crashes. 2 On the other hand, while only a few drivers have BAC's higher than .15, many of those drivers have fatal crashes. For example, almost half of fatally injured drunk drivers have a BAC of .20 (which is over twice the legal limit in all states) or higher.
The biggest problem in reducing drunk driving fatalities now clearly consists of the hard core of alcoholic drivers who repeatedly drive with BAC's of .15 or higher. Candy Lightner observes that “police ought to be concentrating their resources on arresting drunk drivers—not those drivers who happen to have been drinking. I worry that the movement I helped create has lost direction.” 4
Ms. Lightner left MADD and is concerned that the organization that she herself created is changing its focus. "It has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I ever wanted or envisioned," she says. "I didn't start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving." 5
The President of the United States bestowed upon her the Presidents Volunteer Action Award and she was the subject of the movie "Mothers Against Drunk Drivers: the Candy Lightner Story."
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