48 DUI Drivers Arrested Over Holiday Weekend

The "Avoid the 13 Sonoma County DUI Task Force" today announced the arrest of 48 DUI drivers over the July 4th weekend.

One arrest involved an injury DUI collision with one person injured. Details regarding that collision were not available from the California Highway Patrol this morning, according to a news release by the "Avoid the 13" task force.

In addition, CHP officers in the Healdsburg area issued 58 parking citations for trouble spots on Fitch Mountain Road and along the Russian River, said Jonathan Sloat, CHP spokesman.

According to the "Avoid the 13 Sonoma County DUI Task Force," there were no reported fatal DUI collisions.

CHP conducted a checkpoint on Friday night. Two checkpoints on Saturday night in Petaluma resulted in the arrest of five of the DUI drivers over the weekend.

Additional DUI saturation patrols were deployed throughout Sonoma County over the weekend.

Statistics gathered from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over the past 25 years show that, on average, nearly half of all deadly traffic crashes over each year’s July 4th holiday involved some level of alcohol.

“The Fourth of July is a time most Americans spend celebrating with family and friends, but it is also one of the year’s deadliest times on our roadways,"said Petaluma Police Chief Dan Fish, who sent out the "Avoid the 13" task force news release.

"So we will be out in force cracking down on drunk driving," Fish said. "If you are caught driving impaired, you will be arrested,”

In fact, 410 people were killed in motor vehicle traffic crashes nationally during the Fourth of July weekend in 2009.

Of that number, 40 percent involved drivers with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08 grams per deciliter or higher. In California, seven people were killed in DUI wrecks in 2009 while another 352 were injured in Alcohol Involved Collisions.

Fish said that impaired drivers not only take the risk of hurting or killing themselves or someone else, the trauma and financial costs of an alcohol-impaired-driving crash or an arrest can be significant. Violators often face jail time, the loss of their driver licenses, higher insurance rates and dozens of other unanticipated expenses.

Impaired driving is one of America’s deadliest problems. In 2009 alone, 10,839 people were killed in alcohol-impaired-driving crashes, accounting for nearly 32 percent of all traffic-related fatalities in the United States.

That’s an average of one impaired-driving fatality every 48 minutes in 2009. 950 men, women and children died in a California because someone drove impaired over the legal limit.