Thousands of Tickets Issued, Hundreds of Accidents Reported in Connecticut Over Memorial Day Weekend

By BRIAN MCCREADY (Patch Staff)

The holiday weekend is now over and Connecticut State Police released their final crime and traffic stats for the Memorial Day holiday weekend on Tuesday.

The enforcement project started at 12:01 a.m. on Friday and ran through midnight Monday. State troopers focused on drunken driving violations, aggressive drivers, distracted drivers and speeding.

Sobriety checkpoints and targeted DUI patrols were in place over the entire weekend.

Statistics

• 1,254 speeding offenses
• 1,454 seatbelt citations
• 549 hazardous moving violations, which included unsafe lane changing, following too closely, cell phone and texting offenses
• 57 DUI arrests
• 285 accidents, including 49 with injuries
• Two fatal accidents

Since 7 a.m. Monday, May 25, when state police shared Memorial Day weekend stats up until that point, the following occurred:

• 261 speeding offenses
• 298 seatbelt citations
• 75 hazardous moving violations
• 5 DUI arrests
• 38 accidents reported

By way of comparison, over the 2014 Memorial Day weekend:

• 1,248 speeding offenses were reported
• 954 seatbelt offenses
• 4,142 hazardous moving violations
• 54 DUI arrests
• 301 accidents, including 54 with injuries
• No fatal accidents

(Patch file photo)