The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has activated its annual “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” Labor Day national enforcement mobilization campaign.
[Above image by NHTSA]
The agency noted in a statement that it will support its 2023 enforcement effort with a $13.8 million paid media campaign using a mix of television, radio, digital, social media, and billboards to educate motorists about the dangers of impaired driving.
As part of the high-visibility enforcement campaign, law enforcement officers will be working within their communities through September 4 to stop impaired driving.
The initiative includes a number of public service messages: Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over; If You Feel Different, You Drive Different; and Ride Sober or Get Pulled Over.
The agency noted that its data shows that impaired driving is on the rise, with alcohol-impaired-driving crash fatalities increasing by 14.2 percent from 2020 to 2021, as compared to a 10.1 percent increase in overall traffic fatalities from 2020 to 2021.
Additionally, two-thirds of drunk driving crash fatalities in 2021 involved a driver with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.15 or more, which is nearly twice the legal limit of impairment. Those crashes killed 9,027 people in 2021, NHTSA said.
Other agency data points related to impaired driving include:
- In 2021, drunk driving accounted for 31 percent of traffic crash fatalities;
- Some 13,384 people were killed in 2021 in alcohol-impaired-driving crashes; and
- An average of one U.S. alcohol-impaired-driving fatality occurred every 39 minutes in 2021, up from one death every 45 minutes in 2020.