Washington State Patrol Announces New Year's Eve DUI Patrols

OLYMPIA, WA — The Washington State Patrol is asking everyone to celebrate New Year's Eve responsibly, or face the consequences.

In an effort to keep our holiday fatality-free, WSP has announced that they will have extra troopers on patrol this New Year's Eve weekend in an attempt to crack down on drunk or impaired driving.

WSP says it can't be understated how dangerous high or drunk driving really is. Last year, impaired drivers caused more than 10,000 preventable traffic fatalities. That's more than one third of all road fatalities in the country. On average, 300 people die each year in the US in drunk driving crashes around New Year's Eve.

In Washington alone, every year two people die on state highways and two more are seriously injured every New Year's.

Washington State Patrol will be joined by other troopers from 10 other states all across the western U.S., including Oregon, California and Idaho, to make sure that drunk drivers have "nowhere to hide" this holiday season. Past efforts have been pretty successful: WSP says they perform an average of 217 DUI arrests every New Year's.

WSP has held similar patrols this year over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday weekends.

Troopers say, they're hopeful these patrols can help discourage drunk revelers from getting behind the wheel, and making a potentially deadly mistake.

“Our goal is zero deaths due to impaired driving on the New Year’s holiday and when it comes to drunk or high driving, in this and every state in our part of the country, there is simply no place to hide,” said WSP Chief John Batiste.

Finally, troopers want to remind everyone: it's still illegal to drive while high in Washington. Recreational marijuana may have been legalized, but driving under the influence of marijuana is still dangerous, and can still net you a DUI.