Milan police remind motorists: Drive sober or get pulled over

MILAN, Tenn. — With the holiday weekend right around the corner, members of local law enforcement want to remind people that driving drunk is not only illegal but also deadly.

“If you’re planning now, you can go ahead today and plan to have a designated driver,” Milan Police Chief Bobby Sellers said.

With the last holiday weekend of the summer on the horizon, Milan police have partnered with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to stop drunk drivers this Labor Day weekend.

“We encourage our officers to be more vigilant and to look for the signs of people driving impaired, make those traffic stops, speak with the driver to see if they can detect the presence of alcohol,” Sellers said.

Although Chief Sellers says he has no problem with folks having a good time, the main focus of the “drive sober or get pulled over” campaign will be keeping everyone safe while they’re on the road.

“But they need to do it smart, because we all have families and friends that drive up and down the road, and we don’t want innocent people hurt,” Sellers said.

Chief Sellers says arrests have gone down when the department has sobriety checkpoints and increases enforcement leading up to holiday weekends.

“When we first started having those, we made several arrests, and progressively as we’ve had more DUI checkpoints the number of arrests go down,” Sellers said. “So I think that’s an indicator that people aren’t driving while they’re impaired because they know that the police will be out there looking for them.”

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, during Labor Bay 2014, 40 percent of all fatal crashes involved drunk drivers.