CHP Hopes Free Phone Cards Will Avert DUIs

If you’re planning on drinking and driving this July 4 holiday weekend, the California Highway Patrol would like you to make your one phone call before you get arrested -- not after.

For the first time, thousands of Californians will soon be receiving free phone cards as a reminder not to drink and drive.

CHP officers will be handing out 35,000 10-minute cards at sobriety checkpoints and recreational areas, including lakes and parks, throughout the state, CHP Commissioner D.O. “Spike” Helmick said at a news conference Wednesday. Some restaurants will be passing out cards too, he said.

“Hopefully, we can sell these gimmicky types of ads and they work,” Helmick said. “If not, we have two choices -- we take them to jail or we pick up the pieces afterwards.”

The phone cards are part of a two-year campaign aimed at lowering rising death and accident rates related to alcohol, he said.

The California effort is part of a nationwide campaign called “You Drink, You Drive, You Lose.”

“The message is simply do not drink and drive,” Helmick said.

“We’re not suggesting people shouldn’t drink. That’s their own personal decision they make. But they should not get behind the wheel of a car,” he said.

The phone cards will allow drivers to call friends, family or a taxicab to pick them up, Helmick said. Paid for by a federal grant of up to $24,000, the cards will particularly target teenagers.

“The whole intent of this is more of a gimmick, and we admit that,” he said.

“But it’s to get people to remember they need to pick up that phone and call and get somebody to drive them home.”

CHP statistics show that the number of alcohol-related collisions resulting in deaths throughout the state rose each year from 1997 to 2001.

The number of people killed in alcohol-related traffic crashes jumped from 1,100 in 1997 to 1,308 in 2001.

“I think we have a whole new generation of drivers who we have to convince that this is a serious problem,” Helmick said.

Helmick stood with a graph showing that those 1,308 drunk-driving-related deaths in California in 2001 were greater than the number of people killed in airline crashes worldwide last year.

“There’s nothing more you can do for your family than to remember to call and get some help,” Helmick said.