’Tis the Season Not to Drink and Drive
Santa Barbara County Supervisors Designate December ‘Driver Impairment Awareness Month’ at Emotional Meeting
December may be officially designated the season to be jolly, but not coincidentally, it’s also the hairiest month of the year when it comes to drunk driving and traffic collisions.
District Attorney John Savrnoch grew visibly emotional when recounting the grim statistics inflicted by drunk drivers on county roads while speaking before the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday in favor of a resolution declaring December “Driver Impairment Awareness Month.” The supervisors unanimously passed the resolution.
Seventeen people were killed in 2023 by drunk drivers, Savrnoch told the supervisors, and 344 people were injured. That’s out of 283 incidents. Savrnoch said his deputies prosecute offenders as violent criminals, but added, “none of them want to go there. It’s about avoiding it in the first place.”
The emotional toll taken on first responders to alcohol-fueled traffic collisions is high, he said, as it is for his deputies who must navigate the grief of family members of those maimed or killed.
Supervisor Laura Capps’s parents, he noted, got hit head-on by a drunk driver on Highway 154. Her father, then running for Congress, spent a couple of weeks in the hospital recovering.
With Uber and Lyft, there’s no shortage of options for people too buzzed to drive. Supervisor Joan Hartmann noted how a county employee — who just happened to be on the scene — held one of the two girls killed in a suspected drunk-driving crash last week in his arms as she died. “There’s no excuse for this,” a visibly upset Hartmann stated. “That can’t happen.”
