Candace Lightner
Key Player

Founder, Mothers Against Drunk DrivingCandace Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) in 1980 after her daughter was killed by a drunk driver, and was instrumental in expanding MADD into the national organization it is today.

Lightner has split with the group in recent years. She strongly opposed MADD’s fight to lower the national drunk driving arrest threshold to 0.08% BAC, on the basis that “The majority of crashes occur with high blood-alcohol levels, the .15, .18 and .25 drinkers. Lowering the blood-alcohol concentration was not a solution …”

Lightner has continued her disapproval of MADD’s agenda, telling the Washington Times in 2002 that “[MADD] has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned… I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.”