The mission of the Melanie J. Powell Memorial Fund shall be to provide financial assistance for victims on the South Shore who might not otherwise be able to attend a secondary institution of higher learning. The Fund will also provide financial assistance to victims of drunk driving incidents and their families who are residents of the Massachusetts South Shore.

Melanie’s Law making roads safer

Advocates, including Melanie’s grandfather, want to see the consequences for drunken driving stiffened.

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By John P. Kelly
GATEHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
Posted Jul 28, 2008 @ 03:42 AM

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MARSHFIELD — Figures show that Melanie’s Law is making the state’s roads safer — 3,500 people with a track record of driving drunk will be unable to start their cars today without first blowing a clean, sober breath into a tube to unlock their ignition.
Here’s another: 33 fewer people died in drunken driving crashes in Massachusetts in 2006, the first full year the law’s tougher penalties were in place, than the 186 who died two years earlier — an 18 percent drop.

But statistics are tricky things.

Like this one: Police now arrest drunken drivers at a pace of 50 a day compared with 37 the year before passage of Melanie’s Law.

Five years after Marshfield teen Melanie Powell died after being hit by a drunken driver, and nearly three years after Gov. Mitt Romney signed Melanie’s Bill and helped shed the state’s reputation as a pushover on drunken driving, the law’s champions both hail its successes and say that more still can, and should, be done.
Ron Bersani marked Friday’s anniversary of his granddaughter Melanie’s death by publicly calling for more action by the state.

Melanie’s Law Saves Lives!