RALEIGH, N.C. – You may be feeling lucky this St. Patrick’s Day, but law enforcement all across North Carolina doesn’t want motorists to take any chances by driving impaired.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation’s St. Patrick’s Day Booze It & Lose It campaign runs March 11-17. 

The Governor’s Highway Safety Program coordinates at least a dozen campaigns each year to promote traffic safety along North Carolina roads.

While the focus of this campaign is on impaired drivers, GHSP Director Mark Ezzell says his agency focuses on all things traffic safety during the year.

“We also try to do similar campaigns around speeding or seatbelt use or things of that nature to help address issues around driving safety in North Carolina,” Ezzell said. “We know that last year regarding alcohol-related crashes, we lost 357 people on our roads and we lost five during the course of the St Patrick’s Day week, this time last year.”

You’ll not only see increased law enforcement presence, but also additional DWI checkpoints.

That presence will be seen on rural roads as well, areas Ezzell says have become dangerous with increased growth across the state.

“Surrounding metropolitan areas that are growing. And as a result, those rural roads and those local areas are growing. And sometimes the roads were built not for that kind of population explosion that we see,” Ezzell said.

“If you look at the statistics, rural roads are two and a half times more likely to have a traffic-related fatality than urban,” he said.

Ezzell says the campaign will work to keep people safe across the state while educating the public on responsible behavior both on and off the roadways.