RID informed victims and family members involved in drunk driving crashes how to obtain the accident report, hire a lawyer, obtain the record of the offending driver and, if interested, to make “impact” statements at trial. RID also helped to oust judges who were repeatedly lenient to drunk drivers.Īiken and her colleagues also paid close attention to the issue of victims’ rights, an important theme during the Reagan-era 1980s, and one that underscored the emotional concerns of survivors.

Thanks to persistent lobbying and a series of vigils in memory of the dead, RID got the state legislature to pass new laws that prevented plea bargaining, immediately revoked the licenses of second-time offenders and earmarked fees collected from drunk driving cases for better enforcement measures. But it was in New York that it had its major impact. Lamb and Lighter would go on to become prominent figures with Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), which became the largest and best-known anti-drunk driving organization.īy 1983, RID had 130 chapters in 30 states. “That’s the way the system works,” he explained. In California, a police officer told Candy Lightner, whose 13-year-old daughter Cari had been killed by a drunk driver with four previous DWI arrests, that the man would surely not go to prison. Lamb’s five month-old daughter Laura was permanently paralyzed. In Maryland, Cindy Lamb’s car was hit by a drunk driver with three previous driving-while-intoxicated (DWI) arrests who had just imbibed two pints of whiskey. Other activists across the country were also becoming furious at the lack of justice for the victims of drunk driving.

Drunk drivers killed by month