MADD reacts to DUI

MADD responce to Mayor Bergson's DWI. This came from the the papers web site, http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/.

When it comes to drunken driving, an apology only goes so far, said Cal Haworth, founder of the St. Louis County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Now Duluth Mayor Herb Bergson needs to step to the plate and advocate against drinking and driving, Haworth said Monday, reacting to news that Bergson had been charged with and admitted to drunken driving after a crash in Wisconsin on Friday night.
"What needs to be done is for Herb to go out for the next year and talk to every high school and every college and every civic club he can get in front of - and talk about what a stupid thing it was for him to do," Haworth said. "To talk about how fortunate he was that he wasn't killed and to talk about even more how fortunate the area is that he didn't hit somebody else."
Bergson should reach out to at least 100 audiences in the coming year, said Haworth, who helped launch the St. Louis County MADD chapter after losing a son-in-law to a drunken driver in 1983.
Alcohol was blamed for 177 highway deaths in Minnesota in 2004 and 326 in Wisconsin. Minnesota's 2004 total was a 20-year low, said Department of Public Safety spokesman Dennis Smith.
First-time offenders make up the bulk of the drunken-driving charges in both states, but first-time offenders also account for most of the serious- and fatal-injury crashes. In Minnesota, one of out of every nine licensed drivers has a driving-while-intoxicated conviction on record.
Whether Bergson chooses to go on a campaign against drunk driving is a personal choice, said Kathy Swanson, the director of Minnesota's Office of Traffic Safety.
Bergson's admission of his mistake and apologizing for it is an important first step that everyone charged with drunken driving needs to make to keep from re-offending, Swanson said.