It promises to be a busy Labor Day weekend on the roads nationwide, with AAA predicting the highest number of people traveling since the recession. The busiest travel day is expected to be today. The second biggest is the return on Monday.
At least 34.1 million people across the country will take a road trip and here in Harris County, law enforcement wants that trip to be a safe one, accepting a grant this week from the Texas Department of Transportation to help pay for the no-refusal program.
"It's extremely serious, it should be one of the things on the forefront of a lot of people's minds this holiday weekend," said Assistant Harris County District Attorney Allison Baimbridge. "You have intoxicated drivers on the road 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. What the grant does now is allows us to help combat it."
In 2012, in Houston alone there were 566 alcohol-related crashes during summer months, according to TxDOT.
What a no-refusal weekend means that if you're stopped and you refuse other forms of testing and law enforcement wants to do a blood draw, they issue a search warrant that a judge signs to test whether or not you're intoxicate while driving.
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