SACRAMENTO – A federal grant is assisting the California Highway Patrol with the push to reduce driving under the influence on state highways.

California continues to record a drop in the number of deaths related to driving under the influence (DUI).

While the news is encouraging, it is important to remember the factors that contributed to the decrease, among them, enforcement.

“Law enforcement throughout the state continues to do their part by removing impaired drivers from the roadway,” said California Highway Patrol (CHP) Commissioner Joe Farrow. “With renewed grant funding we can continue to turn up the heat on drunk drivers before they kill or injure innocent people.”

The CHP’s “Border to Border II DUI Enforcement Program” is funded by a federal grant which will enable officers to combat impaired drivers thus continuing to reduce the number of alcohol-involved fatal and injury collisions statewide, as well as the number of people affected by the devastation it causes.

Utilizing grant-funded overtime, the CHP will conduct sobriety and driver license checkpoints, DUI task force operations and deploy DUI enforcement patrol operations statewide.

However, enforcement alone will not solve the problem. Education through public awareness campaigns is another key component in reducing the number of people killed and injured every year by impaired drivers.

“Drinking alcohol then getting behind the wheel is not acceptable behavior,” said Commissioner Farrow. “Not only do you endanger yourself and your passengers, you put the lives of everyone on the road at risk.”

Of the more than 65,000 collisions in California in 2008, 14.5 percent of the crashes were alcohol-involved. These collisions resulted in 837 people killed and more than 13,000 injured.

“Impaired drivers destroy lives,” added Commissioner Farrow. “Our goal is to get these drivers off the road, and we will do that through enforcement and with the help of the motoring public.”

Funding for this program is provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

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