Lake in the Hills Announces Holiday Enforcement Campaign Results

From the Village of the Lake in the Hills: The Lake in the Hills Police conducted their Christmas and New Year’s holiday enforcement campaign from December 16th thru January 2nd, 2017. During this time, forty three and a half hours of extra patrol enforcement were conducted by the Lake in the Hills police through a grant obtained from the Illinois Department of Transportation’s Sustained Traffic Enforcement Program (STEP) program.

During those patrols forty three vehicles were stopped for violations of the Illinois vehicle code and the following enforcement occurred; twenty four citations were issued for speeding, five citations were issued for operating without insurance, one citation was issued for no seatbelt, one citation was issued for using a cellphone, and one person was arrested for driving with a suspended license.

The Lake in the Hills police aims to inform our community through the grant enforcement about the dangers of drinking and driving and ‘buzzed driving’. According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on average, twenty eight (28) people in the United States die in motor vehicle crashes that involve an alcohol-impaired driver every day. This amounts to one (1) death every fifty three (53) minutes.

In 2014, 9,967 people were killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for nearly one-third (31%) of all traffic-related deaths in the United States. Of the 1,070 traffic deaths among children ages 0 to 14 years in 2014, 209 (19%) involved an alcohol-impaired driver. Of the 209 child passengers ages 14 and younger who died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes in 2014, over half (116) were riding in the vehicle with the alcohol-impaired driver. The annual cost of alcohol related crashes totals more than $44 billion.

Bringing alcohol related driving closer to home: from 2003-2012, in Illinois alone, 3,866 people were killed by drunk drivers. That placed Illinois in the top seven states for highest fatalities caused by drunk drivers in the entire country.

The Lake in the Hills Police Department wants to remind the community to please have a designated driver or use other means of transportation, regardless of the time of year.

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