St. Patty’s Day revelers who plan to imbibe alcoholic beverages should make plans that don’t include driving, because police will be cracking down this weekend.
The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office and law enforcement agencies throughout the county will flood the streets with officers this St. Patrick’s Day weekend, according to a press release from sheriff’s Sgt. Jose Cardoza.
The “Avoid the 13” campaign is law enforcement’s ongoing effort to periodically crack down on drunken driving during the holidays when heavy traffic is expected on the roads.
Drunk driving on the St. Patrick’s Day holiday weekend claimed the lives of more than 700 people from 2006 to 2010, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. On average, every 51 minutes a person is killed in a drunk driving crash in the United States and the majority of these crashes involve drivers who have a 0.15 percent blood alcohol content or higher, almost twice the legal limit of 0.08 percent.
The Avoid the 13 DUI Task Force will be deploying special roving patrols all throughout local communities including San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Cupertino over the St. Patrick’s Day weekend. In addition to the roving DUI patrols, there will be two DUI checkpoints in Gilroy and San Jose. The DUI patrols and the checkpoints will be in addition to regularly scheduled patrol officers, all looking for impaired drivers on the roads of Santa Clara County.
Also, police encourage any partiers who plan to drink alcohol to plan on avoiding getting behind the steering wheel. If you drink too much and need to get home, you can call a taxi, a sober friend or family member, and don’t let intoxicated friends get behind the wheel, Cardoza said.
The annual Avoid the 13 campaign is funded through a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety.
