If law enforcement suspects that someone may be driving while impaired, that person and their vehicle are pulled aside to a secondary area where law enforcement can further investigate.

Newly released data from the Oklahoma Highway Safety Office shows that in 2017, ten people died and 41 were injured on Comanche County roads in alcohol and/or drug related crashes.

"Whenever someone dies in an alcohol or drug-related crash, it's a tragedy," said Cody McDonell, communications manager for the Oklahoma Highway Safety Office.

"When someone dies on an airplane or other mode of transportation, people talk about it for days and weeks and there's an outcry for more safety features and oversight. When someone is killed in an alcohol or drug related crash, often times the only people who remember are those who were directly affected," said McDonell. "We want to remind Oklahoman's that every life is important and reinforce the need to drive sober, buckle up, put the phone down and pay attention to the task at hand: driving."

During a checkpoint in a similar location in April 2017, nine people were arrested for driving under the influence, three were arrested for driving under the influence of drugs, three were arrested for transporting an open container, and there were four additional drug-related arrests.

The media is invited to attend this checkpoint to help us raise awareness about the impaired driving problem in Oklahoma. Interviews with members of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol will be available. To coordinate times, locations, and interviews, please email cody.mcdonell@dps.ok.gov.

The ENDUI enforcement team coordinates multi-jurisdictional events on a regular basis, including sobriety checkpoints and saturation patrols. These efforts are needed to impact Oklahoma’s impaired driving problem across the state. The locations of these activities are driven by data from the Oklahoma Highway Safety Office and by local request.

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The ENDUI Oklahoma program is a program of the Oklahoma Highway Safety Office and is funded through impaired driving grants from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.