Group Hopes to Keep Streets Safe on St. Pat’s

These leprechauns won’t take you to a pot of gold. But on St. Patrick’s Day, when all of you honorary Irishmen and women are out reveling, they can drive you and your car home.

Really. And the Road Angels, a Los Angeles-based road safety organization, wants you to take advantage of them.

For the first time in its 11-year history, the group is placing volunteers in bars and restaurants in Los Angeles and Orange counties to make sure intoxicated party-goers and their cars get home safely on this night when shamrocks and little men in green tweak the imagination.

Participating establishments in Orange County include Clancy’s in Seal Beach, Gulliver’s in Irvine, Fitzgerald’s in Huntington Beach, Dirty Nellies in Costa Mesa and Hennessey’s in Seal Beach, Laguna Beach and Dana Point.

From his vantage as owner of Clancy’s, Steve Meier has seen many get sloshed at his pub on St. Patrick’s Day, so he said he was happy to be a volunteer driver tonight.

“They all come to have a good time,” Meier said. “Everybody turns Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.”

Eric Oster, founder and executive director of the nonprofit organization dedicated to keeping drunk drivers off the road on key holidays throughout the year, said they chose St. Patrick’s Day to expand their services because traditionally, “People drink alcohol--and drink it heavily--on this holiday.”

The most recent national statistics available from the Orange County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving back this up.

According to a report compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 55 of the 81 traffic fatalities reported on St. Patrick’s Day in 1995 were related to alcohol. By comparison, 50 of the 126 traffic fatalities on New Year’s Eve in 1995 were linked to alcohol.

Typically, Road Angels volunteers staff phone lines on major holidays, such as New Year’s Eve, and are dispatched when drivers who have had too much to drink call the toll-free number (800) LA-ANGEL to get a ride home for themselves and their cars.

On Monday, Road Angels volunteers will be sipping soda and other nonalcoholic beverages at Orange County pubs until called to duty. One volunteer will drive the partyer home in his or her car while another will follow in a second vehicle for the ride back.

“We’re trying to see whether doing this on St. Patrick’s day will make an impact,” Oster said. “We hope so.”