DUI crackdown coming in Kansas

WICHITA -- Kansas law enforcement agencies have seen enough; enough people killed and maimed by impaired driving. So they are cracking down.

Under Kansas law, all impaired drivers go to jail. The minimum sentence is two days; the maximum is six months. Law enforcement and public safety officials will assemble Aug. 12 in Wichita to discuss upcoming enforcement efforts that will put more offenders behind bars.

Whitney Williams, a teenage student whose father was killed in a crash caused by an impaired driver, will be a featured speaker. Williams, a 2010 graduate of Wichita Northwest High School, is a volunteer with the DUI Victim Center of Kansas and will enroll at Cowley County Community College in August.

Two senior officials from the Wichita Police Department, Deputy Chief Terri Moses and Lt. Joe Schroeder, will also speak at the event. Moses will discuss the role of the public in supporting law enforcement efforts to save lives. Schroeder will discuss an internal impaired-driving task force he is leading for the department and the formation of a regional cooperative effort involving multiple law enforcement agencies in south-central Kansas.

They will be joined by Pete Bodyk, traffic safety manager for the KDOT Bureau of Transportation Safety and Technology. Bodyk will highlight the statewide "Drunk driving. Over the limit. Under arrest." crackdown. Starting Aug. 20 and continuing through the Labor Day weekend, Kansas law enforcement agencies will team up with law enforcement and highway safety agencies across the nation in the annual DUI enforcement mobilization.

Williams, 18, lost her father in Sept. 2008. He was riding a motorcycle when a driver who had been drinking ran a red light and hit him. She will talk about the lifelong toll impaired drivers take on families of their victims. As a volunteer with the DUI Victim Center, she speaks frequently on the topic.

"If I can change one life by talking about what happened to me, and get them to change their behavior -- just one -- it will be worth it," she said.

Alcohol-related crashes are usually more serious than those not involving impaired drivers. In Kansas, impaired driving accounted for only 5 percent of all crashes in 2008, but 34.5 percent of all fatal crashes. Statewide in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 3,366 alcohol-related crashes that resulted in 131 deaths and 1,999 injuries. There were 120 alcohol-related crashes that caused 131 deaths; of those 120 crashes, half involved drivers between the ages of 20 and 34. Of the 120 impaired drivers, 105 were male and 15 were female.

The national "Drunk driving. Over the limit. Under arrest." crackdown, organized by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, combines high-visibility enforcement with heightened public awareness efforts. It is designed to put all drivers on notice that if they are caught driving impaired, they will be arrested.

For more information, visit www.StopImpairedDriving.org.