Those driving under the influence remain a high focus of South Lake Tahoe law enforcement

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - One decision to drive while impaired with alcohol or drugs is one too many, but have the educational campaigns aimed at preventing people from driving drunk or high worked?

There were 43 arrests for DUI in the South Lake Tahoe city limits in the first three months of 2022, five on one night. During the first three months of 2020, there were 52 DUI arrests and 35 in 2021. These numbers are a lot, and people on the road are in danger when the decision is made to drink and drive. There is always constant education available through law enforcement agencies, television, social media, and public relations campaigns to drive the point home.

Is the problem growing, or improving?

Here are some numbers for South Lake Tahoe:

2005 - 368 DUI arrests
2007 - 212 DUI arrests
2010 - 206 DUI arrests
2015 - 125 DUI arrests
2020 - 158 DUI arrests
2021 - 132 DUI arrests

There are several explanations for what looks like fewer DUI arrests. Lyft and Uber have been around since 2011, so decisions to not drive home are easier to make. It could be the stricter laws and penalties for driving while impaired, or because of a higher focus on not getting behind the wheel if impaired.

South Lake Tahoe Police Department (SLTPD) Sgt. Doug Sentell is the department's traffic sergeant and is well versed in collisions, their cause, Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) grants, and DUis.

In one year while on patrol, Sentell had 103 DUI arrests. Just one officer, in one year, and in one town.

SLTPD will be rolling out some DUI saturation patrols, ones that have to be publicized prior to being implemented. SLTPD Lt. Travis Cabral said that outside of the grant, the patrol division is regularly focused on DUI enforcement.

"It is one of our top priorities with traffic enforcement," said Cabral.

The OTS grant provides the department with funding for a range of traffic-related enforcement including DUI enforcement, enforcement of primary collision violations, seat belts, cell phone enforcement, and other forms of distracted driving.

The number one cause of traffic collisions in South Lake Tahoe is the speed of a vehicle with improper turning following in second, said Sentell. DUIs are third, and fourth are right-of-way violations.

When SLTPD responds to a collision they evaluate the primary cause, and ask themselves 'what caused this crash?'

The officers have targeted enforcement to combat the top reasons for collisions - speeding, making unsafe turns, DUIs, and right-of-way violations.

"Our department sought out, and got, a grant to combat safety issues that cause crashes - distracted driving, seatbelts, DUIs, and vehicle/motorcycle, bicycle, and pedestrian issues," said Sentell.

SLTPD has prioritized and combated those issues, said Sentell. They have training in advanced traffic reconstruction and can determine the main cause of a crash.

A crash may involve a drunk driver like the fatal crash on Pioneer Trail in 2014, but speed or another cause may be the determining factor. In that 2014 crash, the driver was going 93 mph. Take away the alcohol, would the speed have been that high? We'll never know.

In 2021, there were 21 fatal crashes in El Dorado County, causing the loss of 22 lives, 14 of them as a result of DUI.

"Even if not drinking, if you are around others who are you need to be responsible drivers, friends, and family members," said Fresno County District Attorney Lisa A. Smittcamp in a statewide district attorney press conference in December. "Grab the keys! Take accountability and be responsible, if you see something, say something."

"Even with increased efforts to curb drinking and driving, numbers of DUI and DUI-caused fatalities are still climbing," said El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson.

In 1983 the Ad Council and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (under the U.S. Department of Transportation – U.S. DOT) partnered to launch the Drunk Driving Prevention campaign. It came at a time when many Americans were still unaware of the magnitude of the problem of drinking and driving. Experts predicted that one out of every two Americans would be involved in an alcohol-related traffic accident in his or her lifetime.

The first campaign was "Drinking & Driving Can Kill A Friendship.”

In a 1986 poll, 62 percent of young Americans reported that they were now more conscious of the dangers of drunk driving than they had been previously and 34 percent refused to drink at all when they were planning to drive. Additionally, the U.S. DOT reported a 25 percent decrease in the number of drunk drivers killed in traffic accidents between 1980 and 1990.

In 1990, new public service announcements encouraged friends to intervene in order to prevent a drunk person from getting behind the wheel introduced the tagline, “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk.” This hard-hitting campaign was instrumental in achieving a 10 percent decrease in alcohol-related fatalities between 1990 and 1991.

But drunk driving still causes more than 10,000 deaths every year in the U.S., about one-third of all traffic-related deaths.

On another note, the word "accident" is not used by law enforcement when a collision is caused by a preventable action, such as drinking, speeding, and other unsafe actions.