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State Police crack down on impaired driving this weekend

ALBANY — The New York State Police will increase patrols to rein in drunk, impaired and reckless driving throughout this Memorial Day weekend.

The STOP-DWI enforcement period starts on Friday and runs through Monday. Memorial Day is one of the busiest travel holidays of the year, and police will be out in force to remove impaired and reckless drivers from our highways.

Drivers can expect to see sobriety checkpoints and increased patrols by State Police and local law enforcement agencies during this holiday weekend. Troopers will be using both marked State Police vehicles and Concealed Identity Traffic Enforcement vehicles to more easily identify motorists who are violating the law. CITE vehicles allow the trooper to better observe driving violations. These vehicles blend in with everyday traffic but are unmistakable as emergency vehicles once the emergency lighting is activated.

According to the Institute for Traffic Safety Management and Research at the University at Albany, drunk driving killed 252 people and injured 5,647 others in New York state in 2017. Another 205 people were killed in drug-related crashes.

On Memorial Day weekend in 2018, state troopers arrested 237 people for drinking and driving, issued 13,318 total tickets, and investigated 154 personal injury crashes, which resulted in eight fatalities. In addition to the New York State Police, numerous counties and agencies throughout the state also participated in last year’s Memorial Day crackdown.

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