It’s almost Christmas! This weekend will be filled with festive parties and family get-togethers! As Idahoans celebrate the season, the Idaho Office of Highway Safety (OHS) urges everyone to include a sober ride home in their Christmas plans.
“All anyone wants for Christmas is to have everyone in their family there to enjoy it. Sadly, many families have lost loved ones to drunk driving related crashes. Give yourself or a friend the gift of a sober ride home when drinking, it could save a life and a lot of heartache,” encouraged Highway Safety Manager Josephine Middleton.
According to data from OHS, last year in Idaho there were 1,818 impaired driving crashes, and 110 people were killed.
To raise awareness, OHS recently kicked off an impairment campaign featuring videos of five volunteers at an alcohol impairment workshop called a wet lab. A behind-the-scenes video posted by an attendee at the wet lab recently went viral with millions of views on social media.
Wet labs are a controlled environment designed to show all involved, from volunteer drinkers to police officers, that legal drinking limits aren’t always safe driving limits. Impairment happens faster than drivers might think. Volunteer drinkers learn that even a small amount of alcohol can slow their reaction time and make them unsafe to drive.
For more information on impaired driving visit https://shift-idaho.org/wet-lab/ and https://shift-idaho.org/beheretomorrow/.