Last week, the $5 million statewide grant was renewed by the California Highway Patrol in its ongoing campaign. The continued campaign is to educate and enforce those drivers who decide to drink alcohol and then drive.
Los Angeles County has seen a decrease in the number of accidents and deaths caused by driving under the influence. The number has shown a downward trend in the past years and is reducing every year.
The CHP’s Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System shows that the number of people who died in alcohol-involved accidents in 2009 was 1,146. In 2010, the number of deaths decreased to 972 in alcohol related crashes, showing a 15% decrease. The record for 2011 shows the decrease in collisions due to drunk driving and a reduction in deaths. It also shows the encouraging downward trend.
Public Relations Officer of CHP’s southern division, Rick Quintero, said that the grant will help them to hire more officers and put them on duty on the highways to enforce the drivers and it will also help them in boosting its education part, like their mock driving DUI program for local high schools known as “Every 15 Minutes…”. On Tuesday, Rick Quintero said, “L.A. is one of the busiest counties in California, maybe the nation. As a whole, we’ve seen a decrease in alcohol-related collisions.”
In September 2013, the Impaired Driving and Apprehension II grant or IDEA will be started. The purpose is to decrease the number of alcohol-involved accidents, deaths and injuries.
The Apprehension II grant will help the CHP in educating drivers through local traffic safety presentations all around California and CHP will run a paid media campaign throughout the state. This grant will also allow CHP to conduct sobriety and driver license checkpoints, DUI task force operations and deployment of proactive DUI enforcement patrol operations statewide.
According to the CHP Southern Division, statistics for alcohol-related crashes for the past several years are as follows:
In a press release, CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow said, “Our goal with this aggressive education and enforcement campaign is to deter drivers from making the poor decision to drink and drive, and those who fail to heed this warning will be removed from the roadway and arrested.”
