Let’s make it home safe this holiday season

SOUTH CENTRAL KENTUCKY – Recently, some awards were given out in the name of stopping impaired drivers, and News 40 caught up with two officers who made a good amount of DUI arrests this year.

We spoke to Quintin Wright with the Logan County Sheriff’s Department and Allen Ward with the Glasgow Police Department, who in total made 134 DUI arrests this year.

Wright, who made 99 arrests this year, said that even though his shift is 4 p.m. to midnight, he has stopped impaired drivers during hours all throughout the night and morning. Wright said that through the night, he really focuses on getting impaired drivers off the road, to which he takes a lot of pride.

The sheriff deputy told the station that Logan County is a rural county with two gas stations being open after might.

“It’s going to be expensive, but I’d much rather you pay that $60 for someone to take you to the gas station rather than you drive that two miles up the road, because a lot can happen in two miles,” said the law man.

Ward offered a similar sentiment when he spoke to the station, saying “You could do so much damage in such little time and distance, it’s just not worth it. They have delivery services for everything.”

Ward recalled a collision he worked previously, where a man T-boned another car in Glasgow. Ward said that the man at fault was completely denying the fact he was under the influence of alcohol and various other drugs even when he was “butchering” the standardized field sobriety tests.

According to both officers, many subjects think they’re perfectly fine to drive. “Knowing” yourself and your car tend to be a trend in vehicular accidents, and that could be even more dangerous in rural Kentucky. Ward said “I’m limited to the city, but I talk to the county guys, and it’s most of the time on these secondary roads, don’t even have a line in the middle…”

And while they said it’s a magic word, the power is limited. Ward and Wright both said that saying sorry doesn’t do much for loved ones.

Ward said, “You can ask anyone who’s lost someone to a drunk driving incident, there’s no way to repay that debt.”