Reduce extreme speeds and impairment on our roads

Opinion editor’s note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Minnesota Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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Over Labor Day weekend, an extremely drunk man allegedly plowed his car into a crowded restaurant patio in St. Louis Park, killing two and injuring nine people. That driver’s blood alcohol content was more than four times the state’s legal driving limit.

This disaster was not an anomaly. According to recent Minnesota Department of Public Safety (DPS) figures, the number of extremely impaired drivers is on the rise — as is the number of speed demons clocked at speeds exceeding 100 mph.

In other words, when Minnesotans get behind the wheel these days, they are facing two often fatally serious concerns: high speeds and driver impairment. Those are the leading causes of car crashes and deaths on our roads. That’s why more of us must take personal responsibility and employ long-known solutions: Don’t drive under the influence, and obey speed limits. That can’t be stressed enough!

From mid-August through the Labor Day weekend, officers from just over 250 agencies across Minnesota made 1,235 DWI arrests, according to the DPS. That total is a slight drop from 1,265 last year and below a 2020 high of 1,649. Those same agencies issued 68,723 speeding citations for a four-month stretch until this year’s Labor Day holiday.

Despite that recent summer dip in DWI arrests, 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).

DPS Traffic Safety Director Mike Hanson said speed and impairment have long been difficult problems but that some progress is incrementally being made. He added that more extreme speeds in recent years can be traced back to the beginning of the COVID pandemic when fewer vehicles were on the roads. That made some drivers think it was OK to flout speed limits. Too many motorists are continuing that behavior.

There is no excuse for drivers to end up in the back of a squad car or a hearse due to speed or impairment. “We’re all in this together, and if we all want to get from point A to point B safely, we have to make better decisions,” Hanson said.

The rules of survival are quite simple. Motorists who choose to imbibe should make plans to rely on a sober driver or to use a safe alternative transportation option. Be available as a designated driver. If you plan to drive, refrain from drugs and alcohol.

And remember the consequences of being caught include losing driving privileges, paying thousands in legal costs and possible jail time. DWI offenders, as well as first-time offenders arrested at blood alcohol concentrations 0.16% and above, are required to use ignition interlocks to regain their driver’s licenses or face having them revoked for at least a year.

DPS deploys several dozen officers across the state to work solely on arresting speeders and those who drive either drunk or drugged. And the agency offers training for bar, restaurant and other servers of alcohol so they can be better equipped to live up to state laws that in some cases can hold servers responsible for deaths or injuries caused by customers they continued to serve when impaired.

Looking to longer-term solutions, we’d raise the possibility of producing more vehicles that include interlock systems so drivers can self-monitor as well as ones that can’t be driven faster than certain speeds. But that’s futuristic thinking.

“In a world where speeding has become all too common, it’s easy to forget that it steals lives,” Hanson said. “The staggering fact that over 68,000 speeding tickets were issued over four months — and that’s only the people who were caught — highlights the severity of the issue. We must prioritize safety over speed. No destination is worth the risk of losing a life.”