State Police will step up the enforcement of impaired, distracted, aggressive and reckless driving this holiday weekend.
“Put away your smartphones, follow posted speed limits, make certain that all occupants are buckled up, and move over and slow down when you see emergency and highway maintenance vehicles on the side of the road,” said State Police Superintendent George P. Beach II in a statement. “Remember, if you’re holiday weekend includes alcohol, don’t get behind the wheel.”
The effort will include fixed sobriety checkpoints, an underage drinker initiative and the “Operation Hang Up” initiative, which targets distracted drivers by utilizing Concealed Identity Traffic Enforcement patrol vehicles to better locate drivers talking or texting on hand held devices.
The added enforcement will run from Wednesday Nov. 23 through Sunday Nov. 27, a time when traffic volumes are typically the highest of the year.
During the 2015 Thanksgiving holiday weekend, troopers arrested 218 drivers for DWI, issued 5,910 speeding tickets, 732 tickets for distracted driving and 204 tickets for drivers violating the move over law.
In New York, there were 19 deaths resulting from motor vehicle crashes statewide during last year’s Thanksgiving weekend. Of those, eight were alcohol related, seven were due to excessive speed and five crashes were from a combination of both.