Candy lightner speaks on gods front porch

It has been 10 years since one woman, driven by rage and injustice, defied a nation that winked at drunken drivers and the death and devastation they caused.

And in some respects, Candy Lightner wishes she'd never started Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a powerful grass-roots organization historians credit with turning drinking and driving into a national disgrace.

``I wished I would have stayed home and grieved,'' Lightner said of her 13-year-old daughter, Cari, killed in 1980 by a repeat hit-and-run drunken driver near their Northern California home.

``But if that had happened, I probably would have never started MADD because the anger and rage that started it would not have been there.''

National highway-safety officials and experts agree that MADD's impact on society is indisputable, despite the controversy and bitterness that linger after a power struggle five years ago that ended in Lightner's resignation, or demise, depending on