Mothers Against Drunk Driving

This is an organization that stands for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The organization started in 1980 where a group of mothers started an action to change the statistics of teens dying because of being intoxicated while driving or with a drunk driver.

A speaker came to Santaluces to talk about the mission and explain to students that being influenced by alcohol or drugs can kill you or someone else. David Ganim, the Program Specialist in South Florida, spoke about MADD.

Their first mission statement states, “To aid the victims of crimes performed by individuals driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, to aid the families of such victims and to increase public awareness of the problem of drinking and drugged driving.”

In 2010, more than 10,000 teens were killed due to drunk driving and this was a 55% decrease from 1980 founding. After five years of passion and dedication, 25 states passed mandatory ignition interlocks for all convicted drunk drivers.

It is crazy to think that every two minutes, a person is injured because of drunk driving. Whenever people drink or are high on drugs, it decreases their attention span and have a higher chance of dying than others. Statistics state that an average drunk driver has driven drunk at least 80 times before he or she gets caught. Also its states, “In 2017, 10,874 people died in drunk driving crashes – one every 48 minutes – and more than 300,000 were injured in drunk driving crashes.”

There are many solutions that people can do to change this. However, the first step is to confront a drunk driver. Many people have died and many laws remain the same. MADD is trying to change all of this and make roads safe for other drivers.