It's called Zero Tolerance and it's a statewide campaign to keep roadways safe. Monday, Bob Dallas from the Georgia Governor's Office of Highway Safety was in Savannah to talk about the local enforcement effort. "As we celebrate the holidays, we want to prevent the tragedy of losing a loved one to an impaired driver," said Dallas. "Georgia has done an excellent job getting drunks off the road, just this past week the National Highway Traffic Safety administration issued a report ranking Georgia fourth in the nation."
Dallas credits enforcement and a variety of what he termed tools, including sobriety checkpoints, as the reason for the state's success.
In 2009 during the month of December, 753 people were killed in crashes that involved a driver with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08 or higher. During Georgia’s Christmas travel period (Christmas Eve to midnight the following Sunday) in 2008, there were 3,325 crashes, 868 injuries and 24 deaths.
Wendy Purcell, a member of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) told a compelling story about an accident nine years ago which severely injured herself and her then six year old daugher. Purcell says she's had 12 surgeries since then. "The young man who hit me ran a red light, was driving without a license and was almost triple the legal blood alcohol limit," she told me.
Purcell says often, some people think DUI is relatively harmless. "They see someone getting picked up on the side of the road and think - well, no one was hurt, what's really the harm?", she told me. "But I am proof of the damage that can be done by a drunk driver. By the way, the guy served his time, but I have a life sentence. I will be affected by the accident for the rest of my life."
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