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Hundreds face DUI arrests on Thanksgiving weekend

On Behalf of | Dec 7, 2018 | Drunk Driving |

The holidays usually see a spike in drunk driving arrests, especially around Thanksgiving. This year was no exception. In Georgia, hundreds of people got arrested on suspicion that they were driving under the influence.

Per the Georgia State Patrol, 15 people passed away in car accidents over the holiday weekend, and more than 300 people got arrested. All of that happened in just 102 hours, meaning there were roughly three arrests per hour, on average, for the entire time from the evening on Wednesday to Sunday night. The authorities also responded to a total of 610 crashes. In addition to the fatalities, they reported 242 injuries.

Looking at a stretch of five nights around the holiday, officers arrested 339 people. That’s just counting the GSP arrests, not additional ones that were made by local police agencies. Those arrests would increase the total notably.

The numbers are trending upward. In 2017, just 299 people got arrested on DUI charges, at least by the GSP officers.

On top of this year’s arrests, police gave warnings to 17,046 drivers and gave out a total of 11,523 traffic citations. Of course, many of those were for things like speeding that had nothing to do with drunk driving, but those stats help to show how busy the Thanksgiving weekend really is and how many people take to the roads all over the state.

Getting arrested for a DUI is not really the way anyone wants to spend their holidays, but these high traffic levels mean it happens to hundreds of people every year. They need to make sure they know their legal defense options.

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