Ind. drivers to face March pull-over blitz

Indiana State Police will soon be cracking down on drivers — just in time for two major March events — both of which involve alcohol consumption.

Police officers often respond to serious crashes, and it is especially troubling to find out that alcohol was the cause of the accident, Indiana State Police Lt. Troy McElfresh said.

“It is really disheartening when you find out that because someone chose to operate a vehicle while intoxicated, it caused injury and sometimes even death to people, all because someone took that extra step and drank and then went out and operated their automobile,” McElfresh said.

In an effort to reduce the number of injuries and deaths from drunk driving, the Governor’s Council on Impaired and Dangerous Driving along with Indiana Criminal Justice Institute Traffic Safety division will crack down on drunk driving from March 4 to 20.

“It was started in an effort to detour impaired and dangerous driving in the Indiana roadways,” McElfresh said. “Basically, all law enforcement agencies across the Hoosier state and more than 250 state agencies will participate in this. It is a 17-day enforcement effort, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t enforce ‘Over the Limit, Under Arrest’ during any other period, but this is where a major kickoff campaign takes place."

The March program, called Operation Pull Over Blitz 66, which has been going on for several years, is supported by federal funding that is allocated to the Indiana State Police through the Traffic Safety Division of the Criminal Justice Institute for the crackdown on impaired driving, McElfresh said.

“The Indiana State Police began enforcement, really stiff enforcement, efforts around 20 years ago or so, and we’ve just been aggressively targeting drunk drivers for several years now,” he said.

In addition to the March crackdown, which covers St. Patrick’s Day and March Madness, Indiana State Police have participated in the national effort near Labor Day weekend for the past 10 years, said Ryan Klitzsch, traffic safety division director at ICJI.

In March 2009, there were 41 fatalities and in 24 percent of the deaths, the drivers were legally intoxicated, Klitzsch said.

“We want to educate people to first of all not drive impaired and let them know there is additional enforcement out there to detour drunk driving,” he said.

During the impaired driver crackdown, police officers will work overtime to conduct enforcement activities designed specifically to target impaired drivers, and there will be an increased number of patrols.

“We look for aggressive driving behavior, participating in tailgating and unsafe lane changes, things of that nature,” McElfresh said. “We look for anything that would cause us to believe that maybe a driver is impaired, and we will then take action on that.”

Klitzsch said there has been a decline in the number of drunk driving related accidents.

“The portion of all incidents that were alcohol-related fell sharply from 30.2 percent in 2008 to 24.9 percent in 2009,” he said.

Education is the main focus of the campaign, Klitzsch said.

“A lot of people don’t realize that drunk driving is drunk driving,” he said. “Typically, people think that they can handle it and get behind the wheel and get home safely, but in fact, impairment comes as a factor in your reaction time. Don’t drink and drive, and get the designated driver before you go out. They are looking for drunk drivers, and you don’t want to be one of them because it will affect your life in many ways.”