With holiday celebrations underway, law enforcement agencies are also stepping up drunk driving enforcement in the annual "Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over" Campaign.
David Pabst is the Director of Transportation Safety for the state DOT.
He says the effort began last Friday and will run through the New Year's weekend...
"The whole idea is to get people to think about not drinking and driving. if they're going to enjoy themselves, make sure they plan ahead. There's going to be extra law enforcement out there trying to detect and deter drunk drivers....."
Pabst says federal dollars help fund the extra patrols...
"...There is some money available through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that is granted through DOT to the local agencies. What we have done is created a multi-jurisdictional high-visibility task forces. That is what they specialize in. These officers get together, their paid to enforce OWI laws and aggressively pursue drunk drivers...."
Wisconsin has 25 multi-jurisdictional, high-visibility OWI enforcement task forces that operate year-round across the state.
Alcohol-related crashes resulted in 169 deaths and more than 3,000 injuries. Also last year, there were over 24,200 OWI convictions in Wisconsin. Officials are also concerned about the growing number of drugged driving incidents, caused by legal or illegal drugs.
