Note from MADD

Dear friend,

I just wanted to keep you in the loop on two of our top priorities: the fight to eliminate drunk driving and our efforts to serve victims of drunk driving.

It has been a good couple of weeks in federal anti-drunk driving legislation. Two weeks ago, the House Energy and Commerce committee passed an amendment that would fund research into advanced technology that would prevent cars from being driven drunk for five years. Yesterday, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation passed that same amendment. You can see details here.

In that five years, DADSS, which is a cooperative venture between the automakers, researchers, and the federal government and supported by MADD, believes they will have multiple technologies that will be accurate, reliable, inexpensive, voluntary, passive (that is, we won’t even know the technology is there unless we shouldn’t be driving), and set at the illegal limit of .08 BAC. In short, this technology will eliminate drunk driving.

It looks like we could have this legislation passed by early July. We are also pushing for legislation that would require states to mandate ignition interlocks for all drunk driving offenders; please click here to email your senators about this bill.

For victim services, we have exciting news as well. We have our final tally from all 50 states and, in 2009, MADD served over 57,000 victims and survivors of drunk driving -- one every 10 minutes on average. While our goal is to make sure no victim goes without MADD's services like emotional support, court accompaniment, and other resources, this is a 109% increase from 2003.

All of these services are possible due to your support and the support of people like you. If you'd like to help, your $17 monthly donation can provide that vital first hour of services to someone impacted by drunk driving. Or, if you would like, you can also donate to your local office here.

Thank you for reading and for your support!

Yours,
Laura Dean-Mooney
MADD National President