Area law enforcement cracking down on holiday drunk drivers

A campaign by area law enforcement to crack down on drunken driving will last through Monday, Sept. 7, said Louisiana State Police Troop C spokesman Gilbert Dardar.

Part of a nationwide effort sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the campaign began Aug. 21 and was aimed primarily at reducing drunken driving over the Labor Day holiday, Dardar said.

Enforcement involves raising the number of patrols and setting up sobriety checkpoints statewide, according to a Louisiana Highway Safety Commission release. The commission provides grants for overtime patrols.

Twenty people were killed in Louisiana during the 2007 and 2008 Labor Day holidays.

“We work hard every day, even during normal times,” Dardar said. “Troopers will do pro-active enforcement during the campaign. We want people who are traveling to a location to do so as safely as possible.

“The campaign’s not only about enforcement. It’s a designated time, 18 days, for an educational period, a media campaign… Education is as important as enforcement. If we can change behavior, if we prevent an accident, we’ve accomplished our mission.”

Malcolm Wolfe, spokesman for the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office, told residents not to drink and drive and encouraged them to use a designated driver.

“We will have higher visibility throughout the campaign,” he said.

In conjunction with the NHTSA-sponsored campaign, the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office began Operation Rolling Thunder in early August to crack down on nonuse of seatbelts as well as on drunken driving, said Capt. Scott Silverii, uniform patrol division commander. The operation runs through the end of September.

Task force deputies in Rolling Thunder are analyzing data to identify areas in Lafourche Parish where high volumes of impaired driving and crashes occur. The sheriff’s office fully implemented a Data Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety (DDACTS) model in March, according to a sheriff’s office release.

Since the use of DDACTS began, the number of traffic crashes in Lafourche has been significantly reduced, the release states.

“Certain days and times have higher (incidences),” Silverii said.

Traffic safety task force officers are being employed four times a week as part of the operation to areas identified as having incidents, he said.

“I hope we’ll have higher seatbelt usage and a lower number of crashes,” he said.

A DWI checkpoint will be employed sometime in September. Operation Rolling Thunder will be evaluated after it ends, Silverii said.

The Louisiana Legislature passed several new laws this past session dealing with vehicular safety, Dardar said.

Drivers caught operating a vehicle with their licenses suspended for a DWI conviction will serve 15 days in prison. Drivers who refuse to take a blood alcohol concentration test will have their licenses suspended for a year.

New laws were also passed requiring seatbelt usage by passengers age 13 and older in the back seat of vehicles. In addition, drivers must now allow three feet of space between the vehicle and a bicyclist, and drivers now can use the left lanes of four lane or higher roads only to pass other vehicles.

Dardar said state police are granting a grace period lasting through Oct. 1, 2009 on the new laws concerning seatbelts, bicyclists and left-lane usage. Drivers can be stopped for violating those laws, but will receive warnings during the grace period. An exception would occur if police can prove violators knew they were breaking the new laws, Dardar said.

“Recent legislative efforts have only helped law enforcement,” said Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre in the department release.