Statewide crackdowns on drunken driving, speeding yield some eye-popping numbers

Recent statewide crackdowns on drunken driving and speeding yielded not only large numbers of offenders but some eye-popping numbers for the highest speeds and blood alcohol levels.

From mid-August through the Labor Day weekend, officers, deputies and troopers from more than 250 agencies across Minnesota made 1,235 arrests for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, according to the state Department of Public Safety (DPS). That total is a slight drop from 1,265 last year and below a 2020 high of 1,649.

The same agencies wrote 68,723 speeding citations for a four-month stretch until Labor Day, reported the DPS, whose extra enforcements are now expanded beyond the month of July, as has been the case in recent years.

DPS officials noted that speeding and impaired driving are among the leading causes of deaths on the state’s roads, and traffic deaths this year are running 11% higher than at this time last year (322 vs. 286).

Through Sept. 15, speed was a factor in 94 traffic deaths this year, according to the DPS. That’s up from 81 at this time in 2023. Alcohol-related deaths on the road in Minnesota are virtually unchanged so far in 2024 v. the same point last year (80 vs. 82).

The DPS pointed out some remarkable enforcement examples regarding driving while impaired or speeding:

Police in Eagan were called on Labor Day afternoon to the 3900 block of Worchester Drive and saw a 60-year-old woman in the road sitting in a lawn chair. Residents there provided her with the chair after she hit several parked vehicles and passed out. Police gave her a preliminary breath test that measured her blood alcohol content at 0.443%, more than 5½ times the legal limit in Minnesota. (The state’s legal alcohol-concentration driving limit is 0.08%.)

Elsewhere in the state, one other driver on Steele County topped 0.40%, while the next four down the list ranged from 0.36% to 0.373%.

On the speed enforcement front, 58 law enforcement agencies nabbed drivers for reaching at least 100 miles per hour, with seven motorists getting caught traveling anywhere from 125 to 130 mph.

And even a couple of cases registered big numbers on both lists. One was a driver in Rochester who was going 57 mph over the speed limit had his blood alcohol content measured at 0.32%, four times the legal limit. In Duluth, a trooper stopped a motorist for traveling 121 mph while drunk.