In 1980, Candy Lightner gave a speech about a 13-year-old girl who was killed by a drunk driver with several previous arrests for driving while intoxicated (DWI). She ended by saying, “That little girl was my daughter.” “The audience gasped,” Lightner later reported. “The press jumped up and ran out the door to call the photographers. Pandemonium broke out.”1 Lightner had launched one of the first salvos of the anti–drunk-driving movement. The organization she started, Mothers against Drunk Driving (MADD), would become a high-profile advocacy organization. Today, however, drunk driving competes for attention with speeding, road rage, drugged driving, drowsy driving, and texting and cell phone use behind the wheel. Health officials speak of unifying these concerns under the umbrella of improving traffic safety, potentially blending the moral passion of anti–drunk-driving activism with epidemiologically based strategies for saving lives on the roads. An understanding of the history of efforts to prevent automobile crashes can illuminate the benefits and limitations of various approaches and their possible synergy. (Author/publisher)
Abstract