In 1980, 13-year-old Cari Lightner was killed by a drunk driver while walking to a church carnival. Cari’s mother, Candace Lighter, turned her pain into purpose by working to change drunk driving laws in California, and thus Mothers Against Drunk Driving was formed. In this interview, Wesley Pennington- Program Director for the Rhode Island Chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving- discusses how MADD’s work supports equitable traffic safety enforcement, potential legislation changes, the impact of cannabis legalization, collaboration with local partners, victim resources, and accountability within our community to end impaired driving.
Could you please start by introducing yourself and sharing a bit about your role as Director of the RI Chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)?
My name is Wesley Pennington and I am the Program Director for Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) here in Rhode Island. I came to this position somewhat fortuitously through my previous role as a state trooper with the Rhode Island State Police, which I retired from in 2022. As a state trooper, I was in charge of leading our traffic safety unit. Most of our work there revolved around impaired driving enforcement, so while my role here at MADD is somewhat new, I’ve been involved in impaired driving prevention work for the last 15 years or so and the transition to this new role with MADD felt seamless.
In my previous work, I often had the difficult task of having to deliver the worst news a person could ever hear. I appreciate now having the opportunity to shift my focus and walk beside the folks who have heard that devastating news to support them.
Candace Lightner carried her daughter Cari’s photo with her when she began her advocacy work in 1980 which ultimately led to the formation of MADD. To this day, MADD continues to prioritize the act of sharing photos and stories of victims and survivors of impaired driving incidents. How does MADD engage in this practice today and why is this such an important focus?
The picture serves as a reminder, it tells a story that people don’t easily forget. We focus on the combined impact of sharing photos with stories in our messaging so that we can effectively get the message across in a memorable way. All of this work that we do here at MADD is in service of our victims. It’s so important that people understand that this crime is 100% preventable, and sharing pictures of those who we’ve lost or those who have been impacted by this crime helps to drive the message home for folks. It allows them to connect the numbers to actual stories and put faces to the victims of something that we have the power to prevent. We share these photos to deliver a stronger message in the hopes of being able to reach more people and motivate a commitment to change that allows them to make the safe decision in the future to not get behind the wheel while impaired.
MADD’s overarching mission is to end impaired driving and create a Nation Of No More Victims®. To achieve this, the organization focuses on a few key objectives: ending drunk driving, helping to fight drugged driving, and preventing underage drinking and other substance use. Can you tell us a bit about MADD’s work around each of these objectives on a national level?
As of late, MADD’s focus on ending drunk driving and on fighting drugged driving have come together more with so many states now legalizing cannabis as well as other substances. We’re primarily concerned with the question: how do we end drunk and drugged driving? We concentrate on a few different methods to do this. One of these methods is strengthening awareness. We aim to spread the message as far as we can to help folks understand and take seriously the dangers of driving impaired, whether it be drugs or alcohol. Another way we try to do this is by focusing on legislative issues and advocating for policy change. MADD works to support changes in the law that have the potential to help people understand the consequences of these actions to reduce the likelihood of folks making or repeating unsafe decisions when getting behind the wheel. Part of this work also involves supporting law enforcement in their efforts to go out and hold people accountable by enforcing these laws.
The last thing we prioritize in doing this work is our youth programming. MADD has several youth initiatives with different objectives. The first of these is our Power of Youth program, which focuses on prevention among middle school-aged youth. Data tells us that the average person has already had a drink by eighth grade, so the sooner we can start addressing this issue and spreading information about it, the better, and the Power of Youth aims to do this. The Power of Me program focuses on reaching youth at the junior high or high school level by highlighting how alcohol and drug use can impact brain development and the long-term effects this can have. Lastly, we have our Power of Parents program, the aim of which is to reach parents and share critical prevention information and resources with them so that they can act as partners in helping MADD keep their children and other young people safe.
Since its inception, MADD’s work has also focused on supporting victims, families, and friends impacted by impaired driving. Can you tell us a bit about MADD’s Victim Services program and the types of support it offers for those impacted by drunk or drugged driving incidents? Are there any victim assistance options and supports available to folks in RI through MADD?
MADD has victim advocates who focus on this work and partner with the victims of these crimes to provide them with the support they may need. This is the case for our RI chapter as well. Our victim advocates strive to come beside victims from the moment the incident occurs and onwards, helping them to understand their rights and the difficulties they are likely to encounter and may have to work through, and then providing assistance to help them move through these challenges. This can include things like accompanying victims in court, providing assistance throughout the hearing process, and helping folks to prepare for victim impact statements, providing support as needed to ensure that victims have the chance to share their stories. If victims require any type of counseling, our advocates can help them explore their options and then make referrals to get them the support they need. We also offer support with restitution and can provide financial assistance to help with things like funeral planning and other associated costs.
Our victim advocates are there with victims throughout the entire process and sometimes even afterward. We work with many victims who have lost loved ones to impaired driving long ago, sometimes 20-25 years ago, and we stay connected with them as long as they need, helping them to deal with their loss every day.
There is a significant amount of impaired driving data presented throughout MADD.org and highlighted on MADD’s Statistics page, which begins with a stark reminder that “Every statistic is a person.” Can you speak to why sharing this data is so important, in general, and specifically in terms of MADD’s prevention efforts? Are there any statistics you’d like to emphasize for the RI substance use prevention community?
MADD collects and shares this data because it helps to tell the story. It allows people to see and understand the reality of the problem we’re dealing with. Like the page says and as I always say, every number is a person, and it’s extremely important that we understand that. We can sometimes get so tied up with numbers and data that we forget what they represent, that these are actual people. So when we’re talking about this data and all of the fatalities that happen due to impaired driving, we want to remind folks that we’re talking about real people—real lives lost and real families and friends impacted in crushing ways by crimes that are 100% preventable.
On average nationally, 29% of total fatalities are due to impaired driving. This is a huge number, but in RI, the proportion of fatalities that are due to impaired driving is even higher, typically averaging about 34-43%. We ended the year with about 70 total fatalities across the state, which means that we lost about 30 people to impaired driving in one year in RI. Again, these fatalities were preventable, so those are 30 people that didn’t have to die on our highways. 30 families and countless friends that didn’t have to experience hearing this devastating news and having to come to terms with the fact that their loved ones would never be coming home again. When you’re able to visualize all of the people who are impacted, it’s easy to understand how the numbers multiply.
I think there tends to be an assumption among many in RI that we’re not dealing with this issue, that this is happening elsewhere in the U.S. but not for us. We prioritize sharing these numbers at MADD to help people recognize not only that this is happening in our state, but also that it’s impacting the lives of so many. We can say to folks these are the actual families who are affected and they can share their stories with you to help you understand that this is something we have to deal with, something we all have to work towards ending.
What are some of the current prevention aims of MADD’s RI Chapter specifically? Are there any new or emerging areas of focus, challenges, or initiatives that you’d like to highlight?
Right now, we’re in our legislative session, so we have a couple of bills that we’re currently working to get passed within the state. One of these is the Look Back Bill. If a person is arrested for impaired driving in RI, we can review or “look back on” only the last five years of their driving history to determine the severity level of the offense. What this means is that if someone is arrested for impaired driving, and then 5 years and a day later they are arrested again for impaired driving, this could only be considered a first offense despite it actually being a repeat offense. Most states have a ten-year lookback period, and some have a lifetime lookback period. With this bill, we’re trying to work with the Senate and the House legislators to change the law and extend that lookback period to ten years.
In general, we’re always active in the community working to spread awareness about the dangers of impaired driving. We do this in a variety of ways, whether that be speaking at schools, working within the community to strengthen understanding of the problem and share prevention messaging, or presenting information to law enforcement agencies. This week for example, we’ll be leading an awareness event at North Kingstown High School where each student will learn about a victim of an impaired driving incident, and they’ll then have an opportunity to share that person’s story by organizing a display and creating a non-alcoholic mocktail that honors who this person was. This will be a competition to help get students more engaged in the activity, but it’s a great awareness tool as well.
Do you collaborate with the Regional Prevention Coalitions or other local partners around this work at all, and if so, how do you work with them?
Absolutely! The Mocktail event is an example of some of our work partnering with RISAS. Previously, we’ve partnered with the Warwick Coalition to offer free rides to folks who might be impaired on the night before Thanksgiving, and we’ve also partnered with the Newport Coalition to do this same thing in Newport on St. Patrick’s Day. As MADD’s Program Director for RI, I’m in touch with all of the state’s Prevention Coalitions—we work together often and support each other’s efforts and events within our RI communities. We’ll be holding a big walk this year in September in Narragansett to honor Katie DeCubellis, who was killed by a drunk driver in 1999. The Coalitions will be our partners in this, as they are and have been with our previous years’ Walk Like MADD events, and we’ll all come together to work on this cause collectively. Prevention is really the major key to this work, so we love being able to partner with the Coalitions, and we’re always open to collaborating with other local partners on these efforts as well.
MADD notes on its website that it supports “equitable traffic safety enforcement to decrease roadway deaths, injuries, and racial disparities.” Can you please tell us more about this and what this means in terms of MADD’s work?
MADD recognizes that across the country, we’re seeing a significant number of people who are being killed by police officers and that a majority of these people are African American men. On a national level, MADD realized that they needed to be clearer about their stance on this matter to let folks know that while the organization supports police, it is not in support of police brutality, and to recognize publicly the reality of this issue. Diversity and equity have always been a key part of what MADD does and this focus continues to be critical to our work today.
One of the things I did while working at the police department and still do is provide training around fair and bias-free policing. I train at the majority of police departments to help folks understand what this entails and why it’s so important in this context when you’re engaging often with people from different racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, etc. backgrounds who may hold different identities than you. I aim to help people understand how to look within and acknowledge the things inside of themselves that could potentially cause them to do something like kneeling on someone’s neck for nine minutes when they’re saying they can’t breathe and ultimately killing them. It’s so important for us to be having these hard conversations and providing folks with the tools to identify the biases they may be holding and the impacts this could have so that we can work to mitigate this issue and not allow this to happen in RI. MADD is in full support of this, and we lead our own trainings around the country on unbiased policing, diversity and equity, and how we, as a country, can work to bridge the divide we’re seeing between communities and police. MADD sees a role for itself in helping to bridge this gap, and I personally think we’re the best agency to do so. Standing somewhere in the middle of these groups, we’re in a good position as an organization to be able to see the full scope of the issue and the differing views so that we can try to understand what can be done to bring folks together and get to a place where communities can trust that police are doing their jobs fairly and equitably.
On a local level, how can folks get involved in helping to support the prevention and advocacy work of MADD’s RI Chapter?
You can visit our website, madd.org/rhode-island/, to learn more about all of our work and connect with us if you’d like to get involved. There are so many ways that folks can engage with MADD and help to support our mission and work in RI. You could volunteer with us, show your support by donating to our program, follow us on our social media accounts, participate in our events and activities in the community, and much more! If you have expertise in a particular area and want to volunteer your time and skills with MADD, definitely let us know, we’d be thrilled to work with you. Folks can connect with MADD RI and/or let us know they’re interested in volunteering with us through our website. Send us a message, and someone from our team will reach out to you to learn more and start a conversation.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
We call this period from May through September the one hundred deadliest days. It’s during this time that we historically lose the most people to impaired driving in RI. In the warmer months, people tend to engage a lot more in activities like going out with friends, taking vacations, and attending backyard parties and celebrations. As a result, they also tend to engage a lot more with drinking alcohol and other behaviors that may be unsafe. As we’re coming up on the summer, we ask that you, our RI community members, help to make sure your friends and family members don’t get behind the wheel while impaired. Be vigilant, take care of each other, and help each other to stay safe. We can pass important legislation and shout prevention messaging from the rooftops, but really what it comes down to is us, all of us taking care of each other. It is our communities that have the power to act and create change. When we focus on looking out for each other, we can each help to make our community a safer place so that these tragedies don’t happen, and together, we can get to a place where there are no more victims of this 100% preventable crime.
