By Amanda O’Rourke
With the holiday season about to officially begin, state and local police are stepping up efforts to catch impaired and unsafe drivers.
Locally, municipal police and sheriff's deputies in Union, Snyder and Northumberland counties will conduct roving patrols Wednesday night to get drunken drivers off the roads.
"Thanksgiving eve, statistically, is the one night of the year people go out and drink the most," said Scott Hahn, coordinator of the North Central Highway Safety League's sobriety checkpoint program in Union and Snyder counties and northern Northumberland county.
According to data gathered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Thanksgiving was the deadliest holiday for U.S. motorists in 2007, resulting in 548 deaths, 35 percent of them alcohol-related. That is, perhaps, due to that fact that Thanksgiving eve is one of nearly 40 nights through the end of the New Year's Day weekend that is followed by a day off for most people.
It's for that reason that police will be out in force Wednesday night, Hahn said.
"We try to schedule them when we know there's going to be a high-activity night," he said.
In addition to municipal police efforts, the state police are again in the midst of their Checkpoint Strikeforce Initiative that seeks to identify and arrest impaired drivers, Lt. Myra Taylor said.
"Under the initiative, our 15 regional state police troops conduct random sobriety checkpoints within the troop area every weekend from October 2009 through the end of 2010," Taylor said.
Although the holidays often result in higher rates of crashes and DUIs, police are always on the lookout for impaired drivers, Taylor said.
Statewide, more than 16,000 arrests were made in 2008 for driving under the influence; 1,574 of those were a direct result of state-sponsored checkpoints, Taylor said.
"The fortunate part of the holidays is to bring people together. Unfortunately, sometimes people also have a little too much to drink," Taylor said. "All we ask is to let someone else drive."
A third initiative also is under way at the state level.
The state Department of Transportation on Friday kicked off its Operation Safe Holiday campaign that will have state as well as municipal police using sobriety checkpoints, roving patrols and regular traffic safety patrols to focus on impaired, aggressive and unbuckled drivers.
The state Department of Transportation also says the Thanksgiving holiday is the deadliest in Pennsylvania, resulting in the most crashes of any holiday period in 2008. There were more than 5,300 crashes and 53 fatalities during that span, which includes the weekends before and after the holiday.
Hahn has headed up local sobriety checkpoint efforts since 2007, and said police do their best to make sure the checkpoints not only contact as many drivers as possible, but also leave a lasting impact.
He often seeks the assistance of fire departments for increased lighting, ambulance crews for blood draws, if necessary, and local police departments to add an increased presence.
The patrols are paid for through an annual grant from the North Central Highway Safety Network, Hahn said.
"We try to make it as spectacular as possible to create a lasting impression with people that driving under the influence is a serious offence, and we take it seriously and you can get caught," he said.
In 2008, the highway safety network held four sobriety checkpoints and eight roving patrols in the Valley. So far this year, the network has held three checkpoints and 12 roving patrols.
In 2008, the checkpoints led to more than 50 arrests for traffic violations, underage drinking, drugs, seat belt usage and two illegal alien deportations.
More than 30 arrests have been made so far this year for traffic violations, underage drinking and drugs, Hahn said.
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