What do you think of MADD?

Question

Do you realize that MADD's official position is that they are aggressively pushing for the .08 BAC level to be lowered to .05?

Do you realize that that would mean that most people would be legally too drunk to drive after only one drink? That means you have a glass of wine at a restaurant and you could be arreseted for drunk driving?

Also, they also admit that after they pass the .05 BAC level they will be pushing for .00.

That means if you had one sip of alcohol and blew a .0004 you would be legally drunk.

Answer 1

Now y'all know how the SMOKERS feel! ...... If you have your one glass of wine (and I do have one occasionally), wait an hour before you have another one!   .....  Actually, I had a friend who was President of the MADD Oregon chapter;  her husband was killed by a drunk driver (ironically, he worked for Busch)

Answer 2

I understand their point, but it should really come down to personal responsibility.

I don't really understand how lowering the legal BAC level would help unless they have numbers that show that there are a significant number of accidents caused by drivers whose BAC is between .05 and .08. If accidents are caused by people at a .09, then they're already over the limit, so lowering it doesn't really help anything except that the person is farther over the legal limit. There are plenty of people who are terrible drivers completely sober.

I'm pretty much against any group that tries to legislate rights away from people. If someone hit my kid with a car, drunk or not, I'd want that f*cker locked up. If he was drunk, we already have laws in place for that. If he was completely sober, I wouldn't be trying to ban cars from the road for everyone, but I'd want the person to pay severe consequences.

Answer 3

Many seem to think that MADD wants to put a total ban on alcohol. Meaning, no alcohol consumption of any kind. Prohibition.

Let's think about both of these for a moment. MADD and Prohibition.

First, Prohibition. Did it work the last time it was enforced? No. You still had people making the alcohol, selling it and consuming it. It wasn't very safe, as some of it was made in people's bathtubs (bathtub gin). Who knows how some of the other stuff was made.

Speakeasies were raided nightly, weekly and monthly. People who were h**l bent on drinking, took a risk each time they visited one, just because they wanted to consume alcohol.

Now... put yourself in a parents' shoes. Your child is playing safely (you think) on the sidewalk in front of your house. He/she hasn't thrown anything into the street and is just playing with cars/trucks/dolls.... and BLAM!!!! Someone who was only "slightly intoxicated" has jumped the curb and your child is now lying in a pool of blood.

As a parent, wouldn't YOU want something done? Wouldn't YOU be screaming for vengeance? Wouldn't YOU want the drunk driving laws enforced heavily? I know *I* would.

Answer 4

DAMM

Drunks

Against

MADD

Mothers

Answer 5

I happen to know that they are a self-righteous prohibition group.

They have replaced rational thought with zealotry.

The actual numbers for drunk driving are staggeringly unsupportive of DUI laws.  Every Friday and Saturday night, hundreds of thousands of so-called "drunk drivers" drive home without incident.  In daylight hours you are more likely to be hit by lightning than a "drunk driver".  It is only late at night, and only a small number of people who are drunk and have wrecks - nearly all of these people have fallen asleep at the wheel.  Of course drowsy people make it home safe all the time too, but let's be honest here.

I lost a good friend who fell asleep at the wheel - no alcohol in his system.  I lost some classmates who were hit by a driver who had fallen asleep at the wheel (his blood test revealed that he was only slightly over the limit).  The first case was "driver fatigue", but the second case was "drunk driver", with no recognition of the fact that he was asleep at the wheel.

Drinking and driving doesn't make you a better driver, but it has a very (VERY) weak correlation to you having a wreck.  Then again, just being on the road gives you a weak wreck correlation... MADD would have you believe that all drunk drivers are out to kill your family, because it supports their agenda for the all out ban of alcohol - something that has been preached from their higher ups and supported by their tragic followers.

Answer 6

History of the founder of MADD:

Candice Lightner was the organizer and founding president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). In 1980, 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.

Her daughter had broken almost every bone in her body and fractured her skull, leaving her dead body at the scene."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.

A 1983 television movie about Lightner resulted in publicity for the group, which grew rapidly.

In 1988, a drunk driver traveling the wrong way on Interstate 71 in Kentucky caused a head-on collision with a school bus. 27 people died and dozens more were injured in the ensuing fire.

The Carrollton bus disaster in 1988 was tied with another bus crash in Kentucky in 1958 as the deadliest bus crash in U.S. history, and remains the country's deadliest drunk-driving incident to date.

In the aftermath, several parents of the victims became actively involved in MADD, and one became its national president.

Declines in drunk driving deaths:

The death rate from alcohol-related traffic accidents has declined since the 1980s.

According to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA),  alcohol related deaths per year have declined from 26,173 in 1982 to 16,885 in 2005.

MADD has argued that the group's efforts have brought about this decrease, because it claims that alcohol-related fatalities declined more than did non-alcohol-related fatalities.

hope this helps.            good luck

Answer 7

I have mixed feelings myself.

I agree with MADD that drunk driving is wrong. Who in their right mind wouldn't?

I however disagree with the tactics that they use and the false information that the like to spread.

I view MADD much the same way the view NRA...they ask for extremes like a 0.0 BAC or full automatic rifles in the hopes that they will get what they really want...a 0.5 BAC and semi-automatic weapons.

Personally, my group of choice is Choose Responsibility @ http://chooseresponsibility.org who promote the lowering of the drinking age and a nationalized education program.

Educating people and introducing alcohol at a lower age has been shown to be far more effective than total abstinence. Hiding alcohol away until the magic age of 21 has caused far more harm than good.

Now...the really evil group is AA. They are a cult. The thirteenth step is drinking poisoned kool-aide and being beamed onto the mothership as it passes by Earth hidden in the tail of a comet.

Answer 8

They're the modern version of the temperance movement. The idea is OK as far as it goes for the prevention of alcohol related accidents, BUT, there has to be a response on the judicial side as well.

There are many people who have been convicted numerous time for DUI and until these people are either taken off the streets or put into treatment, there's not going to be much change.

Another big problem is the occurrence of Illegal Aliens being involved in accidents attributed to alcohol. The liberals aren't willing to deal with the base problem so we are stuck with the consequences. But that's another matter Congress isn't willing to tackle.

Answer 9

INteresting.

Answer 10

simple dont drink and drive period

Answer 11

Even one drink affects a person's reaction time, 'motor' skills, hand-eye coordination and ability to reason. Bottom line: why fight so hard to justify drinking (even a little) and driving? I'm patient enough to wait until I'm home to have a drink to unwind. Being behind the wheel of a 2-ton vehicle and being even slightly impaired just doesn't sound like a good idea to most people when they stop to THINK about it.