Starting Friday, the Jefferson City Police Department will be out in force as part of the annual nationwide "Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over" campaign on impaired driving.
This event, which will take place through Sept. 5 and is made possible through grant funding provided by MoDOT, Division of Traffic and Highway Safety and the Missouri Safety Center. The focus of the initiative is to seek out and arrest impaired drivers.
During 2015 in Missouri, 196 people died and 663 were seriously injured in crashes involving at least one impaired driver. According to those statistics, approximately one impaired driving fatality occurs every 1 days and one to two people every day being seriously injured in a crash involving at least one impaired driver.
During the Labor Day weekend in 2015, there were five fatalities and 53 seriously injured in traffic crashes involving at least one substance impaired driver.