Articles Posted in DUI Accidents & Dram Shop

Every year, the Georgia State Patrol increases patrolling and enforcement efforts around the Fourth of July to minimize the number of car accidents around the holiday. This year’s crackdown on drunk driving begins tonight.

The campaign Operation Zero Tolerance kicks off at 9 pm tonight, and will last through the fifth of July. It will include the participation of more than 500 police agencies in Georgia, all taking part in the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety “100 Days of Summer HEAT” initiative. Enforcement officers will be conducting additional patrols across Georgia highways, and will be cracking down especially hard on intoxicated motorists. The 100 Days of Summer HEAT initiative will run through the Labor Day weekend. The initiative includes crackdowns targeting drunk drivers, speeders, as well as motorists violating seatbelt and child safety seat laws.

Every year, we celebrate the declaration of our independence with great fanfare.  We burst fireworks, and host barbecues. Unfortunately, the Fourth of July is also the single deadliest day of the year, with the maximum number of accidents occurring on this day. Between 1986 and 2002, an average of 161 people died in automobile accidents on Fourth of July.

A drunk driving accident in Gwinnett has shocked a Lawrenceville Community, and sparked outrage among residents who are now calling for efforts to control the dangers from speeding and drunk motorists.

On Sunday night, 25-year-old Sabrina Stanek was at home with her two children when she noticed a speeding driver zooming up and down the street. Stanek walked up the curb in front of her house to stop the driver. As she stood near the curb, the drunk driver Constantine Toncz lost control of his truck, and struck the woman. Stanek was crushed between Toncz’s truck and another truck parked off the street. She died from injuries caused by the accident. Stanek was a single mother who had two children, aged 4 and 6.

Toncz, a construction worker from Romania was arrested later, and charged with vehicular homicide. After hitting Sabrina, Toncz didn’t stick around to survey the damage. He simply got out of his car, and walked to a relative’s house on the same street.

Apart from Atlanta, its Athens with its thumping nightlife scene that has the most number of DUI schools in Georgia, with a total of four DUI schools here. The Athens Clarke County Police Department and the University Police Department have been consistently cracking down on drunk drivers across Athens. Last year 207 people were arrested for drunk driving. There is also a considerably larger haul during weekends, when students from the University of Georgia step out, as well as on holidays. This St Patrick’s Day for instance, Athens police checked more than 700 vehicles, and arrested 63 people for drunk driving.

In most cases, these people have to take a course at a DUI school. The program lasts for 20 hours and costs $280. A student who finds himself in a DUI class after being arrested for drunk driving can expect to learn ways to prevent him or her from committing such offences again.

Besides DUI schools, Athens also has other options that prevent drunk motorists from being on the road.  Local transportation services will for a fee, send a designated driver to take partiers home.  All revelers have to do is call the service, and a designated driver arrives on a collapsible scooter that can be folded later, and placed into the car truck. A service like this ensures that revelers can all get intoxicated, without having to worry about which one of them has to stay sober to drive the rest home. Most calls for these transportation services come, not surprisingly, from downtown Athens, where the buzzing nightlife means that more numbers of people are not in a position to drive themselves home.

The toxicology report of a Cobb County high school student who was killed in a car accident in January has confirmed that he had a blood alcohol level of .133 at the time of the crash.

16-year-old Garrett Reed was killed on January 24^th in a collision with another car. Reed had been drinking for several hours before the crash, and before he left his friend’s home in his car, he told him that he was drunk, but was able to drive. As the accident later proved, Reed had been in no condition to drive.

A week after the drunk driving accident, the mother of one of Reed’s classmates Kecia Evangela Whitfield was arrested on charges of providing alcohol to Reed and his friends. She is awaiting trial in April.

March 21^st marked two years since the car accident that killed three Bryan County high school students. Melissa and Heather Arthur and Laura Cobb were killed in an accident just two miles from their school.

On the day of the accident, the three girls were passengers in a Chevrolet Cavalier driven by Tam Duc Le. As the car turned a curve on highway 119, it collided with a pickup truck. Tam Duc Le was charged with felony counts of first degree vehicular homicide and charges of reckless driving and several other traffic violations, including failure to maintain lanes and driving too fast for conditions.

The accident also brought into focus the dangerous highway curve where the accident occurred. Before the accident that killed the three high school students, there had been several other accidents on the curve caused by speeding drivers. At the accident scene, there is still a sign asking motorists to drive at 40 miles per hour. However, families in the area say that motorists frequently drive at far higher speeds.

Law enforcement officers in Georgia expect to be busier than usual during alcohol-heavy holidays like St. Patrick’s Day, cracking down on offenders and preventing drunk driving accidents. This year, was no different. In fact, it was a bumper harvest of sorts for police officers in downtown Athens who lodged a total of 268 criminal charges for a range of offenses, including drunk driving.

Those charged included drivers as well as their passengers, and included charges for violations like drug offenses and outstanding warrants, while others were cited for failure to wear seat belts.The crackdown was part of a special St. Patrick’s Day enforcement involving some 50 troopers manning at least seven different checkpoints. The crackdown is named "Operation Rolling Thunder," and last year it was used to rein in drunk drivers on four University of Georgia game days. This year, officers were expecting several arrests, given the fact that drinking is so much a part of the St. Patrick’s’ Day tradition, but even so they were unprepared for the large numbers of arrests.Officers had warned jail authorities to expect a larger than usual flow of guests, but Clarke County jail has only one fingerprint system, and jail officers ended up dealing with more numbers of offenders than they were prepared for.Most of those arrested were forced to spend many hours in jail before they could be bonded out.

Law enforcement officers tend to have their hands full during busy holidays, especially those that involve plenty of drinking and merriment, like Thanksgiving and New Year’s.The numbers of people drinking and driving tend to peak around New Years Eve, which is arguably the most alcohol-heavy holiday of the year. St Patrick’s’ Day however must rank close behind.While no one wants to play party-pooper, it’s a fact that the number of alcohol-related car accidents increase exponentially during a holiday. That’s why crackdowns like Rolling Thunder are essential – to make sure that those who have tempered their enjoyment with responsible drinking behavior, are not made to pay for those who have been stupid enough to tank up and slip behind the wheel. The St. Patrick’s Day crackdown in Athens received plenty of complaints from "victims" who were "made" to wait 20 hours before being bonded out, and lodged in crammed cells that were full of other likeminded DUI offenders.For those who whine about being made to wheeze into a breathalyzer and have their holiday end in a jail cell, Atlanta car accident lawyers would have one simple piece of advice – don’t drink and drive.