Six Killed in County Traffic Over Labor Day Weekend : Highway deaths: More than 50 people died in road accidents throughout the state. Drunk-driving arrests are up over last year, the Highway Patrol reports.

Traffic accidents claimed at least six lives in Los Angeles County over the Labor Day weekend and caused more than 50 fatalities across the state--a pace that appeared to be slightly greater than last year.

By 6 a.m. Monday, police roadblocks and traffic stops in Los Angeles County had already accounted for 547 arrests of suspected drunk drivers. Statewide, a California Highway Patrol spokesman reported, there were 2,447 drunk driving arrests by Monday morning, compared with the 2,240 arrests made over the same period last year.

CHP Officer Andy Guitierrez attributed some of the increase in drunk driving arrests to a recent lowering of the state’s legal blood alcohol limit. In January, after a vote by the state Legislature, the legal limit for alcohol in a driver’s bloodstream dropped from .10% percent to .08%.

Some health officials claimed Monday that abuse of liquor over the holiday weekend also was to blame for the increase in fatalities and arrests.

Alcohol-related accidents and crimes weighed heavy at the emergency room inside California Medical Center in downtown Los Angeles. One nurse estimated that the weekend’s patient load was 50% higher than on the rest of the year’s already-busy weekends.

“When you get so many serious injuries, people with problems that aren’t as bad have to wait,” said nurse Scott Aguilar. “That means people with broken bones and bad lacerations have to wait five, six hours before we can even start to help them.”

Aguilar and other medical officials gathered in front of the medical center’s emergency room to decry the latest loss of state funding for Los Angeles County’s trauma care system and urge passage of a state liquor tax initiative.

“The way things are going now, the system’s going to die,” said Dr. Michael Trainor, an emergency room doctor and president of the state chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

Doctors were unable to save a 30-year-old Upland man who died about 1 p.m. Sunday in Pomona after losing control of his speeding pickup truck on the transition road from the southbound Foothill Freeway to the eastbound San Bernardino Freeway, the CHP said.

In East Los Angeles, a car driven by Felipe Hernandez, 20, of Anaheim, ran a red light and slammed broadside into another car, killing the unidentified driver, about 11 a.m. Sunday. The car then hit two other vehicles, injuring two women, and struck a pedestrian, seriously injuring him as well, CHP officers said. Hernandez was treated for minor injuries and arrested on suspicion of felony manslaughter.

Moshe Ellerbock, 18, of Pasadena was killed about 3 a.m. Sunday when the car in which he was riding hit a street light at Laurel Canyon Boulevard in North Hollywood. And Sook Hi Lee, 72, of Sherman Oaks, died after his car went through a red light and struck another vehicle while traveling east on Burbank Boulevard in Van Nuys, police said.

Shortly after 8:30 p.m. Sunday, a motorcycle hit two parked cars in Southeast Los Angeles, killing a 15-year-old passenger and critically injuring the driver, Los Angeles police officials said. Earlier the same day, a 26-year-old motorcyclist died after he ran a red light at Sunset Boulevard and Vermont Avenue, ramming into a passing car. Neither of the two killed was identified by police.