Labor Day Weekend 2008 Advisements

According to California Highway Patrol (CHP), this Labor Day weekend the Maximum Enforcement Period (MEP) will begin at 6 p.m. on Friday, August 29, and will last until midnight on Monday, September 1. Beginning sixty years ago, the CHP, in response to legislative, public, and media based pressures, initiated a program entitled the Maximum Enforcement Period in order to combat the escalated levels of roadway accidents and deaths often seen during holidays. After compiling traffic accident and fatality statistics for the state of California, the first CHP commissioner, Clifford Peterson, decided in 1948 that the CHP needed to take additional steps during major holidays in order to offset the growing number of accidents.

The CHP identified six major holidays in which to provide extra monitoring, including the upcoming Labor Day weekend. During these Maximum Enforcement Periods, nearly eighty percent of local CHP officers are assigned to duty in order to provide extra monitoring for potential reckless driving. This weekend, one can expect that all available officers from the Bay Area's twelve CHP county offices will be on the road and participating in these heightened security measures. The CHP will also be utilizing DUI checkpoints in order to cut down on the number of impaired drivers on the road.
During this long weekend, CHP officers will be attempt to identify violators of three major causes of roadway accidents which include individuals who are not wearing seatbelts, individuals who are speeding, and individuals suspected of driving under the influence or either drugs or alcohol.

Last Labor Day weekend, the CHP reported that both DUI arrests and fatalities had fallen from statistics collected in previous years. Between Friday, August 31, 2007 and Tuesday, September 4, 2007, five hundred individuals were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, a number which decreased from five hundred and seventy eight arrests during the same period in 2006. There was also a significant decrease in the number of DUI related deaths, dropping to two DUI related deaths in 2007 after four DUI related fatalities were reported in 2006 during the Labor Day holiday weekend.

In addition to the CHP labeling Labor Day weekend as a Maximum Enforcement Period, this weekend is also considered an Operation Combined Accident Reduction Effort (C.A.R.E.) which focuses its' efforts on increased officer presence on Interstate highways such as I-5 and I-80.

Please take some time to visit our websites:
San Francisco DUI Attorney
San Mateo DUI Lawyer
Marin County DUI Defense
Northern California DUI Defense Lawyers
San Francisco County DUI Defense Lawyers