‘It can happen': MADD uses flipped car as visual reminder of impaired driving for summer campaign
It marks the launch of the annual campaign by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Edmonton, which hopes the car will remind drivers to not drive impaired and help save lives.
'Hopefully, they remember that this is something that can actually happen to them and it's not something that happens to other people,' president of MADD Edmonton Allison Tatham said at the campaign launch.
'It can happen. It happens right here in our own community.'
Tatham has been a paramedic for the past 19 years. She said working in emergency services did not prepare her and her family for being a victim of impaired driving.
'Eleven years ago, my dad was killed by an impaired driver, and it was something that was completely foreign to me as somebody who helps other people with their own emergency,' she said. 'Now it's something that happened in my own life.'
Tatham added that she wishes the message was getting through to more people but said the legalization of marijuana has presented new challenges.
'Impaired driving also includes drugs, and marijuana (is) probably one of the bigger ones that we see because it doesn't affect you right now. It affects you later,' she said, adding that people can feel high in the middle of driving to their destination.
MADD Edmonton crashed car campaign (Cam Wiebe/CTV News Edmonton)
MADD Edmonton launches their "Crashed Car" campaign. A flipped over car on the side of the road sits under a billboard in Nisku on June 25, 2025. (Cam Wiebe/CTV News Edmonton)
According to MADD Edmonton, four people are killed and 190 people are injured every day from impaired driving incidents.
The car will sit at the Nisku location for six weeks before moving to its next location by Dignity Memorial on St. Albert Trail.
The campaign runs until the end of the summer. Tatham hopes it will be the 'face of the community every day,' and that the crashed car will remind people not to drive impaired and to report an impaired driver if they see one.
'If we can call 911 every day to report an impaired driver, we're going to be so much better off in the long run,' she added.
'We just want people to understand that this is happening.'
With files from CTV News Edmonton's Cam Wiebe
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