Candy Lightner

Candy Lynne Lightner (born May 30, 1946 in California ) is the American founder and first president of the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

The MADD was founded by Lightner in 1980 under the name Mothers Against Drunk Drivers after their 13-year-old daughter Cari was killed in a traffic accident caused by a drunk driver. At that time, drunken accident-causing people in the United States were mostly sent to open prisons rather than closed prisons . In this case, the driver was sent to a so-called "half-way-house" for two years. He had to stay there overnight, but he could still drive to his old place of work every day. In response, Lightner founded the MADD.

Since she fell out with the MADD in 1985, she has called the MADD's focus on the complete suppression of alcohol a mistake. She became one of the MADD's fiercest public critics. She stressed that she founded the organization to keep drinkers off the wheel, not to "campaign" against alcohol in general. In the mid-1990s she even worked for the American Beverage Institute , a lobbying organization for the American brewery industry, to prevent the alcohol limit from being lowered on the roads.

credentials

• Candy Lightner: A grieving mother helped America get MADD. In: People Weekly. March 15, 1999, p. 110.
• SE Frantzich: Citizen Democracy: Political Activists in a Cynical Age. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland 1999, ISBN 0-8476-9151-9 .
• O. Friedrich: Candy Lightner. In: Time. 125, 1985, p. 41.
• One woman can make a difference: Candy Lightner and Mothers Against Drunk Driving or MADD. In: Vogue. 176, 1986, p. 170.
• Original thinkers: These five helped reshape the way we see our world - and live and work in it. In: Life. 12 (12), 1989, pp. 167-171.
• M. Sellinger: Already the conscience of a nation, Candy Lightner prods Congress into action against drunk drivers. In: People Weekly. 22, 1984, pp. 102+.