California Roads Were A Hotbed Of Recklessness For July 4

Image: Eric Paul Zamora (AP)

If you were on the roads anywhere in California over the July 4 holiday weekend and you managed to make it home safe, count yourself lucky. Roads across the state were filled with DUIs, crashes, and arrests over the holiday weekend as multiple outlets reported.

Forget Autonomy, Drivers Still Want Control

A few times a year during major holidays, California’s Highway Patrol conducts what’s called Maximum Enforcement Periods. They usually start a few days before the main holiday. This year, CHP started at 6 p.m. on June 30 and ended the period at 11:59 p.m. on July 4. The agency released the results of their efforts on July 5 and the results were staggering, disturbingly so.

Across the state, 68 people were killed, half of which the agency says weren’t wearing a seat belt. DUIs were also a major problem across the state, with 1,224 arrests made over people making the dumb decision. Alarmingly, the CHP says that that number broke down to “an average of one DUI arrest every five minutes.”

Problematic, too, was speeding. Of all the drivers on the roads in the state over the holiday, the CHP managed to issue 9,700 speeding citations. CHP Commissioner Sean Duryee said the results of the period are a reminder that people need to be more responsible both in vehicles and behind the wheel. “All of these deaths were preventable, and the loved ones they leave behind will be forever impacted. Traffic safety is everyone’s responsibility, and these statistics show us how much work there is still to be done,” Duryee said.

This year’s statistics represent the highest number of fatalities, DUIs, and speeding citations since 2020. Deaths this year were up 58 percent over 2022; DUIs were up nearly 66 percent compared to both 2020 and 2021; speeding citations were up over 2,000 percent compared to 2020. Those speeding citations were already up 173 percent over 2019.

As always, stay safe out there.