Drinking and Driving Goes Beyond The Roads

Visitors and residents here in Rice County enjoy outdoor recreation on our lakes, rivers and rolling hills. Outdoor recreation has grown over the years to include boating, snowmobiling, ATV riding, four wheeling, dirt bike riding and motocross.

Throughout the year, more and more people enjoy the great outdoors on a motorized craft or conveyance of some sort. Rice County offers numerous opportunities for recreation on our many lakes and rivers as well as miles of bike, walking, hiking, running and snowmobile trails.

I hope people after reading this want to go out and join in the fun and adventure available in Rice County. My point in mentioning the great opportunities for recreation here in Rice County is not to be a travel ad, but to implore you to enjoy the amenities of Rice County safely and make people more aware of the increasing number of preventable tragedies occurring while people are participating in outdoor activities.

Once again Rice County has been labeled one of the deadliest counties in the State of Minnesota for deaths or injury from drunk driving. This has been a frustrating label that law enforcement and other organizations continue to clean away through awareness and enforcement efforts.

We have had much success in this area and deaths caused by drunk driving on our roadways have gone down considerably over the last ten years; unfortunately, our injury rate has not dropped as quickly.

We will continue our efforts towards zero deaths, because any death or injury from drunk driving will always rank too high. Separate and not included in those statistics are deaths and injuries cause by drunken driving of off-road crafts and conveyances.

Rice County continues to experience more off-road drunken driving deaths than we see for roadway drunken driving. In the last year we have had four off-road deaths from drunken driving and one roadway death.

A four-to-one ratio of deaths off-road versus on-road is staggering standing alone, but when you consider the number of road miles traveled (remember, Interstate 35 runs through Rice County) each year versus the number of off-road miles traveled, the number becomes even more shocking.

Our fight to prevent off-road deaths will not be won simply by increasing enforcement of drunken driving laws on our waterways and trails. Increased enforcement helps and will continue. The factor which will help the most, though, falls to each of us—we must all remember drinking and driving off-road do not mix any more than drinking and driving on-road.

I am often surprised when friends comment after a person has been charged for drunk driving in a golf cart or when a boater is charged for boating with a blood alcohol level over .08 that they are shocked by charges and they didn’t think that was illegal.

The laws regarding drinking and driving apply equally on and off the roads here in Minnesota and you face the same consequences both in a legal and physical outcome. Impaired driving will and does result from drinking alcohol and driving regardless of whether you are on a snowmobile, boat, golf cart, ATV, dirt bike, lawn mower, tractor or any other motorized contraption a person can imagine.

The motorized conveyance does not kill people—the driver who puts themselves behind the steering mechanism after drinking does. Each of us needs to apply the same rules to off-road driving as we do for our on-road driving.

Friends don’t’ let friends drive drunk! When you are going out on a trail ride or boat outing and you plan to have alcohol, also plan to have a designated driver. The decreasing number of deaths on our highways shows we can strive for zero deaths with great success through awareness and enforcement.

I ask each of you to make a New Year’s resolution to think before you drink and drive, not just on our roads but off-road as well, and just don’t drink and drive.

Don’t let the fun of off-road recreation and boating end in tragedy. With the new blanket of snow on the ground many will take to their sleds over the upcoming holiday season. As you do, remember to stay sober, ride safely and enjoy.