Highway Deaths Rise on Weekend : Drunk-Driving Arrests Also Up for 4-Day Holiday Period

Statewide and Los Angeles area highway traffic fatalities, as well as the number of drunk-driving arrests, were up from a year ago during the New Year’s weekend just passed, the California Highway Patrol reported Wednesday, but so was the time motorists had to get into trouble.

“It’s difficult to draw any hard conclusions,” CHP spokesman Steve Kohler said, “because this was a 4-day weekend, while the 1984 New Year’s weekend was only 3 days.”

In the period between 6 p.m. Friday and midnight Tuesday, he said, there were 51 fatalities throughout California, and the CHP arrested 2,857 people suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. A year ago, 33 died in the state and the CHP made 2,145 arrests.

Although the death figures include those not in CHP jurisdictions, arrests made by other law enforcement agencies were not part of the report.

72 Deaths in 1980

Going back to 1980, when the New Year’s weekend reporting period was 4 days long, Kohler said there were 72 fatalities throughout California--an all-time high for any New Year holiday period of that length.

There were 57 deaths in 1979, also one of the longer New Year’s weekends, but that was at a time when there were fewer drivers and fewer registered vehicles in California, Kohler pointed out.

In the CHP’s southern division, which covers most of Los Angeles County, there were 11 traffic fatalities this holiday weekend, compared to 10 in the shorter reporting period a year ago. There were 609 drunk-driving arrests this time and only 421 a year ago.

For all of 1984, Kohler said, California had 4,760 fatalities, compared to 4,571 during 1983. He noted, however, that the 1984 figure could change as reports come in from local agencies.