(Credit for Photo: Courtesy of Commonwealth Media Services: Caption for Photo: PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll at a joint press conference urging Pennsylvanians to celebrate responsibly ahead of the Labor Day holiday.)
Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News
(Harrisburg, PA) PennDOT, the Pennsylvania State Police, along with partners of safety held an event yesterday in Harrisburg to let Pennsylvanians know to responsibly celebrate ahead of the Labor Day holiday, as part of the enforcement and education campaign running through September 1st known as the National Crackdown on Impaired Driving by the Pennsylvania State Police and local agencies for the municipal police. This effort is funded by more than $6.2 million from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration through PennDOT’s statewide annual distribution of that funding for enforcement of impaired driving. This enforcement will have a goal of trying to reduce the amount of deaths, injuries and crashes related to impaired driving on roadways throughout the state of Pennsylvania. Over last year’s Labor Day holiday weekend, which was Friday, August 30th, 2024, through Monday, September 2nd, 2024, there were 1,002 crashes across Pennsylvania, resulting in 722 injuries and 13 deaths and of those crashes, 106 were related to alcohol, resulting in 65 injuries and 4 deaths and 27 of those crashes were related to drugs, resulting in 22 injuries and 3 deaths. During that same Labor Day holiday weekend in 2024, Pennsylvania State Police Troopers, troopers also made DUI arrests totaling 514 and investigated impaired-driving related crashes totaling 65, three of which were fatal. According to PennDOT secretary Mike Carroll and his speech at the recent event in Harrisburg, “we all want those numbers to be zero” and “impairment is impairment.” Carroll also gave some tips to avoid being impaired when it comes to driving during the 2025 Labor Day holiday season. These included selecting a designated driver, who is defined as someone who has consumed no alcoholic beverages before driving and riding on public transportation. Carroll also commented that if you are a party host during the 2025 Labor Day weekend, bring non-alcoholic beverages along with your food that you are bringing. Carroll also hammered the point home to keep your phone away from you when driving because it is now illegal in Pennsylvania to drive while you are on your phone as well as to buckle your seatbelt when driving and to not take alcohol or drugs. Carroll also recommended to read the labels of your drugs for prescription when they say to not operate machinery that is heavy and that until you know how the drug affects you, do not drive.