California Highway Patrol officers Monday evening will end a Labor Day weekend enforcement campaign aimed at catching drunken and drug-impaired drivers on highways and roads in Riverside County.
The CHP’s “maximum enforcement period” got underway Friday evening and is slated to wrap up shortly before midnight.
All available officers from the Beaumont, Blythe, Indio, Riverside and Temecula stations have been deployed for a targeted crackdown that coincides with end-of-summer saturation patrols and sobriety checkpoints in municipalities throughout the Inland Empire.
“Impaired driving remains one of the most serious traffic-related problems on our roadways today,” CHP Commissioner Warren Stanley said. “Let’s end the summer safely and remember to designate a sober driver, wear your seatbelt and obey all traffic laws.”
During the 2017 Labor Day weekend MEP, CHP officers statewide arrested more than 1,000 motorists on suspicion of driving under the influence. Thirty people died in wrecks throughout California that weekend, according to the agency.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics showed that one-third of crash fatalities during the 2016 Labor Day weekend involved drunken or drug-impaired drivers, and according to the agency, half of all drivers between 18 and 34 years old who died in a crash over the 2017 Labor Day weekend period were impaired by alcohol.
The CHP deployment is part of the NHTSA’s nationwide “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” campaign.