Pay attention now, because there are a lot of states involved here.

On August 10, two Colorado police officers were driving through Goshen County, Wyoming on their way to a funeral for two officers recently killed in the line of duty in South Dakota. A volunteer fireman spotted the car, which was reportedly speeding, driving erratically, and using its emergency lights to pass other vehicles.

Goshen County Sheriff’s Capt. Brian Morehouse said he clocked the car going 57 mph in a 40 mph zone. After pulling them over, he smelled alcohol and found beer in a cooler inside the car. The officer driving was charged careless driving and speeding. His breathalyzer test revealed a BAC of .07, just under the legal limit of .08. As a result of this, he was charged with the misdemeanor DWUI instead of DUI.

Check out the local news coverage here.

On occasion, people complain that Comedy Guys dedicates so much time in its defensive driving classes to the dangerous combination of alcohol and moving vehicles. Well, law enforcement people hear about this more than you’ll hear in ten defensive driving classes, and still they can forget the risks and take stupid chances with their own and others’ lives and safety.

Tomorrow night is New Year’s Eve, the most dangerous night of the year for getting killed in a collision caused by drinking and driving. According to AAA, “an average of 80 people a year are killed in alcohol-related crashes on New Year ’s Day—almost two and a half times as many as on the same day of the week in other weeks around New Year’s.”

And, of course, drunk drivers don’t just kill themselves. Very often they take some of the rest of us with you.

Drive Sober Tomorrow Night

Well, and every other night, too. Alcohol affects your brain in many ways, which means your judgement will be affected.  When the party’s winding down tomorrow night is not the time to be decide what to do because you may not be thinking clearly. The best plan is to decide what you’ll do before you take that first drink.

Pick a designated driver. This means that someone may miss out on some of the fun at the party, but they’ll also miss the fun of trips to the emergency room or the funeral home later.

Switch to non-alcoholic drinks long before the party ends. It takes your liver one hour to clean out one drink’s worth of alcohol (typically the same for a 12oz. beer, a 5oz. glass of wine, or a 1.5oz. shot of the hard stuff), so time your drinking to make sure that your liver has time to do its stuff.

Protect Yourself from Drunk Drivers

If you’re on the road tomorrow night,  look out for other drivers who aren’t quite as sober as yourself. Watch for cars that are weaving among lanes or going either dangerously fast or alarmingly slowly. Maintain a careful speed yourself, and increase your following distance so that you can avoid becoming part of someone else’s collision.

If you list the 20 Cities in the USA with the most drivers who have alcohol-related driving convictions on their records, one fourth of those cities will be in Texas.

But don’t bother with the statistics: Insurance.com has already compiled the list for you.

And in their article they ask a very important question: “Do these places have more partiers or better law enforcement?”

Having more drivers with drinking convictions on their records could mean there are more drinkers on the roads OR that police are working harder to catch them and see them convicted.

And the second explanation could explanation why Texas – the state where MADD was founded -  has more cities on the list than any other (California comes in second with 4). Since its founding in 1980, MADD has been pressuring courts and lawmakers, first here in Texas then quickly spreading across the USA, to strengthen and enforce the laws that get drunk drivers off of the roads.

In recent months, texting while driving has been getting more media attention than drinking and driving (and to tell the truth, there is evidence that texting may be even more dangerous), but never think that anyone has forgotten how dangerous driving while intoxicated it.

Last year in Texas, there were more than 27,000 alcohol-related collisions, resulting in over 17,000 injuries and almost 1000 deaths.

This year again, law enforcement people statewide are launching “Drink. Drive. Go to Jail.” Starting tomorrow and continuing until after Labor Day, officers will be working overtime on the lookout for drivers who are endangering their and others’ lives by driving under the influence.

Convicted first-time DWI offenders can pay a fine of up to $2,000, lose their driver’s license for up to a year, and serve 180 days in jail. Safety officials say other costs associated with an impaired driving arrest and conviction can add up to more than $17,000 for bail, legal fees, court appearances, court ordered classes, vehicle insurance increases, and other expenses.

Of course, people who drive under the influence are nothing to laugh at.

There may have been a time when driving drunk was the stuff of comedy in movies, but a lot of decades and a lot of unnecessary deaths have happened since then.

Most of us know better now, and Comedy Guys Defensive Driving is working hard to educate the holdouts.

But that didn’t stop a Website called Super Tight Stuff from gathering up ten stories of people getting DUI citations in crazy ways. Check it out.