May 2, 2024

Garden City Police cracking down on DUIs through Labor Day

 

Garden City, KS(westernkansasnews.com) During the period, August 16 through Labor Day, September 3, The Garden City Police Department will join 150 other local and state police agencies across Kansas in a campaign aimedat removing drunk and other drugged drivers from the roadways. You Drink. You Drive. You Lose., is underwritten by the Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT).

During 2017, in Kansas, alcohol and other drugs were implicated in 40% of the crash deaths on Kansas roads. Over the course of the year, this equated to one person suffering death every two days, and at least 163 families receiving death notification visits, all due to drivers’ decisions to drive impaired. According to KDOT, over the past five years, the average proportion of fatality crashes attributable to alcohol impairment, alone, is 23% – or almost one-fourth of all fatality crashes. The agency also reports that crashes involving at least one impaired driver are likely to be more severe than are other crashes. For example, the risk of serious injury in a chemical impairment crash is almost five times that of the crash where such impairment is determined to have not been a factor. More striking is the fact that the risk of death is over fifteen times higher in the case of an impairment crash. Impaired drivers need to be removed from the road, for their safety and the safety of others sharing the road with them.