Quote:
Dear Frank,
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
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Anyone wanna wager me that when every new vehicle in the U.S. has DADDY- whoops, that's DADSS- MADD will not dry up and blow away; no, there will be an alcohol related death somewhere, somehow, so naturally they'd then have to lobby congress for making retrofit of old cars mandatory... then when that's done and there's still a highway fatality, they'd go back to congress and lobby for a .01 BAC. Takers? Anyone?
Another thing I find odd is the deafening silence from MADD when the subject of distracted driving or cell phone use while driving comes up... yeah, I've visited their forums... many of them engage in that so I guess that's off the table...
Ya know what would be funnier than isht? Legislate that the next gen cell phones have alcohol interlocks to prevent DWI- Dialing While Intoxicated. MADD, are you listening???
OK... to be clear... I'm not promoting drunk driving. I'm saying, in my 50 years on the road, I can count the times I've seen, much less be threatened, by drunk drivers on one hand. It's that odds thing again...
Another thing I'm saying is: Say it's Friday night and I'm sitting around the house having some beers. A family member has a medical emergency, say, a heart attack. Being that I'm out in the middle of nowhere, the best choice for rapid access to medical assistance is to jump in the car and haul *** to the Emergency Room. Except... the car won't start! I can promise you, heads would roll...
