Provided by the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office:
The guy dancing with the leg lamp. The couple locked in the closet. The priggish boss suddenly grown fond of ear-wounding karaoke.
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Are there any holiday party clichés that we’ve missed? Oh yes … the bleary drive home.
On that last one, Bucks County’s DUI Task Force has a word of advice: Don’t.
As the alcohol-fueled holiday party season hits full stride, police will be out in force on Thursday night to help deter overindulgent souls from driving – and to stop and arrest those who do.
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From 8 p.m. Thursday to 1 a.m. Friday, 15 officers from nine municipal police departments in Bucks County will conduct a DUI patrol extending from Old Lincoln Highway in Penndel Borough to the Lincoln Highway corridor into Falls Township, ending at Tyburn Road.
Participating will be officers from Bensalem, Falls, Lower Southampton, Middletown, Newtown, Solebury and Warrington Townships, and from Penndel and Quakertown Boroughs.
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The goal is to keep as many people as possible from choosing to drive after over-celebrating at pre-holiday gatherings.
Holiday periods can exacerbate the number of drunken drivers on the road; last year, for example, 15 people died in 1,307 crashes during the weekend prior to Christmas in Pennsylvania, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
Statewide, an average of almost one person per day died last year in alcohol-related crashes, according to PennDOT. Statistics also showed that alcohol-related crashes were 4.5 times more likely to result in death than were those in which alcohol was not involved.
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“People tend to let their guard down when they are in the holiday spirit,” District Attorney Matthew Weintraub said. “More than ever, this is the time of year to be careful when celebrating the holidays with friends and family.
“Let’s all get home safely after celebrating,” Weintraub said. “Stay sharp; don’t drink and drive.”
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Thursday night’s patrol will be the second in a yearlong series of enforcement actions funded by the DUI Task Force’s current grant. The first, a saturation patrol conducted on Thanksgiving Eve along the Street Road corridor, resulted in seven arrests for DUI and four arrests for drug possession.
For more than a decade, the Bucks County task force has used Impaired Driving grants to help keep motorists safe during high-risk holidays and weekends. The grants, which help pay the added salaries of officers who participate in the patrols, as well as the costs of equipment used in DUI enforcement, are provided through PennDOT and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in cooperation with the PA DUI Association.
