THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 3, 1994 TAG: 9412030293
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
Some drivers got their first holiday greeting on Friday night. It came from state police who stopped them for a sobriety check at the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway toll plaza.
By 11 p.m., police had pulled over several dozen vehicles, although only one driver was cited for drunken driving. But many others who had been drinking received stern lectures, even though they were below the legal limit of intoxication.
It was the first local edition of what will be a Christmas-season assault on drunken driving in Virginia. State police will be running more than 100 of these checkpoints across the commonwealth, said Col. M. Wayne Huggins, superintendent of the Virginia State Police.
``The holiday season is a peak time of the year,'' Huggins said. ``There is more partying going on, and, unfortunately, people use this time also to do more drinking and driving.''
The stops are aimed first at keeping drunks off the road, so the state police are not keeping the times and locations secret. The next sobriety stops in southeast Virginia will be on Dec. 10 and 16 on State Route 33 in Middlesex County. There will be others in Hampton Roads between Christmas and the new year.
Just because state police are announcing their safety checks, would-be drunken drivers shouldn't count on eluding capture by taking other routes. Local police will mount their own checkpoints, and they are not announcing theirs in advance.
The holiday checkpoint blitz comes at a time when alcohol-related traffic deaths are declining across the country.
According to statistics compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the number of drunk drivers involved in fatal crashes across the country dropped 33 percent during the last decade, from 14,589 to 21,780. And the percentage of all traffic deaths involving alcohol decreased to 43.5 percent from 57.3 percent.
But Huggins said the decline needs to be assessed in context. Almost 17,000 people, he said, will be killed nationally during 1994 because of drunk drivers. Up to 450 of those victims will be in Virginia.
``I find those numbers totally unacceptable,'' Huggins said. ``The state police, along with local police, will continue to do everything in our power to keep that decline going.''
State police believe that sobriety checkpoints, which were first used about 10 years ago, have proven to be an effective way to take drunk drivers off the road. Huggins said the checkpoints have caught repeat offenders and scared many into staying off the roads altogether after drinking.
Tougher laws with stiffer penalties also have helped curb drunk driving, according to experts. But the major change in Virginia's law - a lower blood alcohol content level of 0.08 that went into effect July 1 - has not had much impact, said Maj. John Scott, deputy director of the bureau of field operations at State Police headquarters in Richmond.
Scott said that comparative numbers are few because the law has been in effect for less than six months. So far, the results are mixed.
There was a slight increase this year for October, when 752 people were arrested, compared to 637 in 1993.
But from July through October of this year, 7,506 people were arrested for drunk driving. That is a drop from the 7,933 arrested during the same time period in 1993.
``My conclusion is that there hasn't been a lot of change or a lot of difference,'' Scott said.
Another change begins in January when police will be able to instantly revoke the license of any driver caught operating a vehicle while intoxicated.
Not all drivers will be ordered out of their cars at checkpoints, or will be asked to take blood-alcohol tests, Huggins explained. As police get more experienced at working sobriety checkpoints, they become quite expert at picking out the drunk from the sober.
``It becomes pretty obvious to the trained eye,'' Huggins said. ``And when a drunk person rolls down his car window, you would be amazed at the odor that comes out. It could literally knock you down.'' MEMO: Staff Writer Steve Stone contributed to this report.
KEYWORDS: DRUNKEN DRIVING by CNB