Drive safely on New Year’s

Published 2:12 pm Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has launched a crackdown on drunk driving coinciding with the 2011 winter holiday season.

Nation-wide last year, 10,228 people were killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, with 415 occurring during the second half of December alone, according to the department.

There has been  a decline in drunk driving fatalities in 32 states, including Washington state, which went from 207 in 2009 to 170 in 2010.