Archives: History
Victim Advocate Training Institutes are introduced to train volunteer and staff victim advocates on how to appropriately provide supportive services to victims and survivors.
Project Red Ribbon, known today as Tie One On For Safety, launches in 1986. MADD’s longest running public awareness campaign, the public is asked to tie a red ribbon to a visible place on...
MADD's earliest known usage of "designated driver" is in 1986. MADD has since led the charge to popularize the phrase, making it a household term. Today MADD urges the public to plan ahead and designate...
In the mid-80s an important term begins to emerge in MADD’s vernacular, the word “crash.” MADD does not use the word “accident” when referring to drunk or drugged driving, because it’s a choice, a violent...
MADD revises its mission in 1985: To mobilize victims and their allies to establish the public conviction that impaired driving is unacceptable and criminal, in order to promote corresponding public policies, programs and personal responsibility.
In July of 1984, MADD makes a conscious and deliberate decision to change its name from Mothers Against Drunk Drivers to Mothers Against Drunk Driving… to signal that the organization is against the action, not...
A major milestone happened on July 17, 1984… the 21 minimum drinking age is signed into Federal law. President Ronald Reagan, known for “states’ rights” said in his remarks that day, “this problem is bigger...
The MADD National Office moves from California to Texas to be located in the middle of the country and near a good airport. At the office grand opening in Hurst of September 1983, then-Democratic House...