Officers Cracking Down On Drunk Driving This Holiday Season

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(UNDATED) - Law enforcement throughout the Midwest are conducting an impaired driving crackdown through January 1st.

Their message is simple: if you drive drunk, you will be arrested.

First Sergeant Dave Bursten of the Indiana State Police says some people who would never drink and drive tend to do it on New Year's Eve.

Indiana drivers agree to take a blood alcohol test as a condition for receiving a driver's license. If you refuse the test, you're guilty of the crime whether you have any alcohol in your system or not.

Bursten says the most common way to identify a drunk driver on the interstate is wrong way driving. He says it's a good idea to avoid staying in the far left lane. That's because to a wrong-way drunk driver, they think they're in the right lane.

On city streets or highways, symptoms of a drunk driver may include sitting through a green signal, making wide turns, drifting into the opposing lanes of traffic or hugging the yellow center line or the white fog line of the road.

Bursten says if you suspect someone is driving drunk, call 911 and report it. Give as complete a description of the vehicle as you can and get the license plate number only if you can do so safely.

To avoid the possibility of driving drunk, assign a designated driver before attending a party. That person should abstain from alcohol.

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