You Drink & Drive. You Lose.

Colonel Paul McClellan
Superintendent
Ohio State Highway Patrol

This holiday season, the Patrol has joined law enforcement agencies across the country to intensify the fight against impaired driving by joining the You Drink & Drive. You Lose. public education campaign.

Additionally, December is National Drunk and Drugged Driving (3D) Prevention Month and troopers will participate in Operation C.A.R.E. Life Saver Weekend, from December 16 through 18 and the MADD Red Ribbon campaign to remind Ohioans to designate a driver.

There are basically three categories of individuals our troopers continue to interact with on Ohio roadways:

1) Drivers that knowingly and actively choose to make decisions and drive aggressive placing others in danger, such as impaired drivers. We must continue to strictly enforce aggressive violations and arrest impaired driver.
2) Drivers that are not certain of the right choice and may make dangerous mistakes. We will continue to educate them, whether it is through the issuance of a traffic citation, warning or speaking those that show emerging trends toward unsafe driving behavior.
3) Drivers that are actively trying to obey traffic laws and operate in a safe manner. Troopers will continue to assist the motoring public and identify safe drivers as a resource for influencing others about traffic safety.

Troopers and Patrol personnel throughout the state are making roadways safer daily by removing impaired drivers. Last year the Patrol arrested over 25,000 impaired drivers and stopped 87,000 aggressive drivers alone.

Troopers also continue to educate drivers of all age groups about the importance of making good decisions and the public can and must help by actively influencing friends and family to make the same smart decisions including planning ahead to designate a driver if you choose to consume alcohol as you celebrate the holidays, to insist that everyone in you vehicle is buckled up before you leave.

As of last month, 825 people have been killed as the result of preventable crashes in counties throughout this state. It is time again that we all stand together and insist that we are not going to accept these numbers as the societal norm.

Ask yourself who’s going to be next? Will it be your family member, friend, child or spouse next? We can listen to the survivors and look at the images of the victims and know that we, as motorists, must choose to be survivors and not allow ourselves to be victims.