SACRAMENTO, California — Mother’s Against Drunk Driving is joining forces with law enforcement to save lives this holiday season.
"Drunk driving crashes go up about 40% during the holidays. Wednesday before Thanksgiving is called 'Black Wednesday.' It’s one of the deadliest days on the road,” said Lori Bergenstock, with MADD.
MADD says each year more than 11,000 people die in drunk driving crashes with the holiday season being especially dangerous.
“More people are out drinking, more people are out on the road and it just leads to more chaos happening as far as drinking and driving, doing drugs and driving, any type of impaired driving,” said Bergenstock.
One of the things people can expect on the road this season is more patrol from the California Highway Patrol.
“CHP will be doing our maximum enforcement period and that is because of the increased volume of traffic,” said Officer Ruben Jones, spokesperson for the California Highway Patrol.
In 2022 alone, statewide the California Highway Patrol made 1,016 DUI arrests during the holiday weekend maximum enforcement period.
"We want more officers out there. We want more black and white CHP patrol vehicles out there because of the increased traffic. Lets be honest, myself included, when we see a police car out there first thing we do is take our feet off the gas and look at the speedometer. So the more of a visual presence we are, we tend to see driving behaviors (get) better,” said Jones.
When considering that the average drunk driver will drive impaired 80 times before being caught once, MADD is partnering with law enforcement to try and bring those numbers down.
“We would much rather law enforcement pull you over, have you spend the night in jail. As inconvenient as a DUI is, it’s not near as bad as hurting someone or hurting yourself driving under the influence,” said Bergenstock.
The maximum enforcement period runs throughout the holiday weekend.
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