Contributed by the Gilroy Police Department:
The Gilroy Police Department has been awarded a new traffic safety grant for an anti-DUI program aimed at preventing deaths and injuries on our roadways.
Additional enforcement measures to combat impaired driving are coming as a result of a recent $27,050 grant awarded by the California Office of Traffic Safety to the City of Gilroy. The Gilroy Police Department is dedicated to keeping our streets safe through both enforcement and education.
“This grant will certainly assist our efforts to promote this goal and work towards minimizing roadway related deaths and injuries," Chief Denise Turner said.
The special DUI Checkpoint grant is to assist in efforts to reduce the number of persons killed and injured in alcohol and other drug related collisions in the community. The grant activities will specifically target impaired driving offenders as well as educating the public on the dangers of impaired driving through the use of DUI/driver’s license checkpoints. When possible, specially trained officers will be available to evaluate those suspected of drug-impaired driving.
Drunk and drugged driving are amongst America’s deadliest crimes. In 2010, 791 people were killed and over 24,000 injured in alcohol and drug-impaired crashes in California. In 2012, the City of Gilroy experienced 2 fatalities and 12 injuries in these tragic crashes. Crashes involving alcohol drop by an average of 20 percent when well-publicized checkpoints are conducted often enough. Checkpoints have proven to be the most effective of any of the DUI enforcement strategies, while yielding considerable cost savings of $6 for every $1 spent.
“DUI checkpoints have been an essential part of the phenomenal reduction in DUI deaths that we witnessed from 2006 to 2010 in California,” said Christopher J. Murphy, Director of the Office of Traffic Safety. “But since the tragedy of DUI accounts for nearly one third of traffic fatalities, The City of Gilroy needs the high visibility enforcement and public awareness that this grant will provide.”
Funding for this program is from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
