Your holiday weekend begins tonight and tomorrow night with DUI checkpoints in Buena Park and Garden Grove.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD) is also running special “saturation patrols” tonight in Lake Forest, Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita.
Starting first is the Traffic Unit of the Buena Park Police Department, whose sobriety stop runs from 7 tonight through 3 a.m. Saturday near the intersection of Beach Boulevard and Stanton Avenue.
That’s the same time frame for the OCSD operation, which puts extra deputies on roads known for drunken/drugged driving arrests, wrecks and deaths in the three target cities.
Garden Grove PD’s Traffic Unit conducts a DUI/driver license checkpoint from 9 p.m. Saturday through 3 a.m. Sunday at an undisclosed location within city limits.
At the checkpoints, each police department’s officers will stop motorists to check for proper licensing as well as signs of alcohol and/or drug impairment. Some cops have been specially trained to evaluate those suspected of drug-impaired driving, which now accounts for a growing number of impaired driving crashes, according to state and national road safety experts.
Hey, did you know indications of impairment even from drugs prescribed to you by a doctor legally can lead to a DUI arrest? It’s true, pill popper.
If you must party or swallow a bucket full of Oxy before getting on the road, you are strongly advised to use a designated driver, a service like Uber, Lyft or Curb or, hey, how about showing those old timey taxi cab drivers some love? They’ve got families to feed, too.
This Fourth of July weekend, the OCSD, Uber and Mothers Against Drunk Driving have partnered to get those who have imbibed home safe.
“This holiday weekend, and at every celebration, we encourage our community members to make a plan before they start celebrating,” says Sheriff Sandra Hutchens. “Driving under the influence of any substance is completely preventable. Designate a sober driver, or use a ride-share service. It’s the safest way to ensure that you and your friends and family arrive alive–don’t drink and drive.”
New Uber riders who begin or end their trip in Orange County, and enter the promo code RIDESAFEOC on the Uber app, get their first ride free (up to $20) today through Tuesday, according to OCSD.
Existing Uber users can enter the promo code OCFAIRWIN each time they ride to be entered to win a prize package at the Orange County Fair, the sheriff’s department adds.
Meanwhile, OCSD announced it holds “a specialized Motorcycle Safety Enforcement Operation” Saturday in the areas its deputies patrol “in an effort to lower deaths and injuries.” Extra deputies will patrol areas frequented by motorcyclists and where motorcycle crashes occur, and the law folk will look for violators in two-, four- and up to 18-wheel modes of transportation.
Funding for the Buena Park. Garden Grove and OCSD ops come from separate California Office of Traffic Safety grants, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.