GOHS Campaigns to Curb DUI’s this Holiday Weekend

With some states seeing an increase in alcohol-related crashes and deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, Georgia is looking to get drunk and drugged drivers off the road during the Labor Day holiday weekend.

 Law enforcement from Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas, Florida and Tennessee held the 29th annual “Hands Across the Border” DUI enforcement and awareness campaign.

Sponsored in Georgia by the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, spokesman Robert Hydrick said COVID-19 limited the number of stops law enforcement will be making this year.

And while the number of fatalities due to impaired driving were down this year, Hydrick said with the Labor Day holiday weekend here, Hands Across the Border is sending out the message that drinking and driving is never a good idea.

According to preliminary data from the Georgia Department of Transportation, 74 people were killed in DUI crashes in Georgia from March through June of this year.

That’s a 12 percent drop from the 84 people killed in DUI crashes over the same four months in 2019.

However, the volume of traffic on roads and highways in Georgia in 2020 has been estimated to have decreased anywhere from 20 to 50 percent during the pandemic.

Hands Across the Border began in Kingsland, Georgia in 1991 as a friendly wager between the Georgia State Patrol and Florida Highway Patrol to see which agency could reduce the number of DUI deaths in the southeast Georgia and northeast Florida area.

Within ten years, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee joined the multi-state effort to save lives on roads across the southeastern United States.