St. Patrick’s Day is a great holiday to celebrate. A day to celebrate Irish culture is ways of wearing green attire, attending church services or lifting restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol. This year the holiday falls on a Saturday. The last time it occurred on a Saturday (2007), 527 motorists were arrested for DWI and all three-traffic deaths were alcohol-related. In comparison to non-weekend years (2008-2010), in which 606 people were arrested for impaired driving and only one out of seven deaths were alcohol-related. With regards to this information, deputies and officers from all over Minnesota will be working Toward Zero Death (TZD) this Saturday’s St. Patrick’s Day. “We would rather have drivers plan ahead not to drink and drive instead of having to make arrests or have needless tragedies occur,” said State Patrol Sgt. Jesse Grabow on the subject. A primary vision of the TZD program is to create a safe driving culture in Minnesota in which motorists support a goal of zero road fatalities by practicing smart driving behavior. TZD focuses on four strategic areas to reduce crashes: education, enforcement, engineering and emergency trauma response.
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