Posts Tagged ‘Southern California’

DUI Checkpoint Locations

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Our Orange County DUI Lawyers have learned that this holiday weekend, local police departments all over Orange County will be running DUI and Drivers’ License Checkpoints, as well as saturation patrols, according to the OC Register.

Each city’s police department has issued varying levels of details regarding their planned action; all are participating as part of a statewide campaign sponsored by the Office of Traffic Safety. A few planned actions include:

- Yorba Linda: DUI/Driver’s License checkpoint on Friday 9/3 from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. on Imperial Highway east of Valley View.
- Placentia: DUI/Driver’s License checkpoint on Friday 9/3 from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m., location not given.
- Anaheim: DUI/Driver’s License checkpoint on Friday 9/3, time/location not given.
- La Habra: DUI/Driver’s License checkpoint on Saturday 9/4, time/location not given.
- Orange: Saturation Patrol on Friday 9/3 and Sunday 9/5
- Irvine: Saturation Patrol on Saturday 9/4

Adds the Register: “During Labor Day weekend last year, CHP officers throughout the state made 1,417 arrests for driving under the influence.” May we add, not all arrests result in a DUI conviction, so please contact our Newport Beach DUI Lawyers at (949) 682-5316!

Posts Tagged ‘Southern California’

DUI Checkpoint Locations

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

A DUI charge can trigger the following expenses, according to the Auto Club of Southern California:

Fine (minimum) $486

Penalties (minimum) $780

Vehicle Tow and Storage:  $187

Alcohol Education Class:  $500

Auto Insurance Increase (3 years): $8,652 average

Victim Restitution Fund $100

DMV License Re-issue fee:  $125

Booking, fingerprinting, photo:  $156

Attorney and legal fees (average):  $2,539

TOTAL (minimum) $13,500.00

Plus, and I can assure of this from 15 years of being a DUI Specialist in Orange County, it’s common for clients to go through all of the following:

Shame and humiliation;

Lost work time and wages

Medical costs (in some cases)

Vehicle Property Damage (in some cases)

Civil liability

Loss of a Driver’s License

Need for alternate transportation.

Take it from our Orange County DUI lawyers, drinking and driving is an expensive proposition.  Make sure you know your defenses before you decide to pay the price.

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• Bengals’ Maualuga pleads guilty to DUI (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Posts Tagged ‘Southern California’

DUI Checkpoint Locations

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Charges stem from Southern California drunk driving incident.

Robert Avary DUIRoger Avary, screenwriter of ‘Pulp Fiction’, has entered a guilty plea to vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence in California. Avary had been accused of causing the death of a passenger when he hit a telephone pole with his Mercedes in Ojai, California. His wife was injured in the January 13, 2008 accident. He pleaded not guilty to the charges last December though has since apologized for the drunk driving incident.

Avary wrote ‘Pulp Fiction‘ with Quentin Taratino and won an Academy Award for the screenwriting in 1995.

If you need someone that specializes in Orange County DUI cases, call me at 714-568-1560.

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Posts Tagged ‘Southern California’

DUI Checkpoint Locations

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Lori Petty was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence in Southern California Saturday night. The 45-year old actress reportedly hit a skate boarder with her car around 9:30 pm. The victim was treated for minor injuries.

Petty was booked at Van Nuys jail on charges of felony California DUI. She was released on $100,000 bond just before 7:00 am.

Petty has made recent guest appearances on ‘Prison Break’ and ‘House’. She is most known for her movie roles in the 90′s, including ‘Point Break’, ‘Tank Girl’ and ‘A League of Their Own’.

If you have questions for our Orange County DUI Lawyers, please contact the firm, anytime, at 714-568-1560.

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Posts Tagged ‘Southern California’

DUI Checkpoint Locations

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

The Orange County Register shows the following list of Checkpoints for Memorial Day weekend in Orange County.  Here’s a list of  selected checkpoints:

•Newport Beach – 9 p.m. Friday to 3 a.m. Saturday at northbound Dover and 16th streets.

•Costa Mesa – 8 p.m. Friday to 2 a.m. Saturday at northbound Harbor Boulevard at Fair Drive.

•Brea – 8 p.m. Saturday to 2 a.m. Sunday. Brea police did not disclose the location.

•La Habra – 9 p.m. Friday to 2 a.m. Saturday at La Habra Boulevard and Euclid Street.

“Memorial Day travel by Southern Californians is expected to drop by 2.3 percent to just over 2.5 million trips this year – yet another sign of the harsh economic times, travel experts say.

As more people are expected to stay in town, local police are gearing up to combat drinking and driving on local roads.

Anaheim police Sgt. Rick Martinez, who coordinates DUI enforcement efforts in the county, said that while it’s difficult to quantify, “it seems that people are inclined to stay closer to home, go to people’s homes or establishments, and get behind the wheel after they’ve been drinking.”

Police departments throughout the county will be mounting sobriety patrols, as they routinely do for holiday weekends.

If you plan on sticking around for local festivities, make sure to have a designated driver. Driving under the influence checkpoints will be held in cities including Newport Beach, Lake Forest, Costa Mesa, Brea, and La Habra, police say.

Here’s a list of a selected checkpoints:

•Newport Beach – 9 p.m. Friday to 3 a.m. Saturday at northbound Dover and 16th streets.

•Costa Mesa – 8 p.m. Friday to 2 a.m. Saturday at northbound Harbor Boulevard at Fair Drive.

•Brea – 8 p.m. Saturday to 2 a.m. Sunday. Brea police did not disclose the location.

•La Habra – 9 p.m. Friday to 2 a.m. Saturday at La Habra Boulevard and Euclid Street.

While Southern Californians are planning fewer out-of-town trips this year, that’s not the case nationwide.

Nationally, travel this weekend is projected to increase slightly – by 1.5 percent, a trend that reflects a significant drop in gas prices compared to 2008 when the cost for fuel was at an all-time high, nearing $4 a gallon.

Just over 2 million local travelers will drive to their destinations, about a 2.1 percent decrease from the previous year, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California.

Travel by air by local folks is expected to drop even more significantly – by nearly 6 percent to 213,000 Southern Californians.

“The economic downturn is affecting California more acutely than many other parts of the country, and the state’s double-digit unemployment has without a doubt pushed down the number of holiday travelers,” says Jeffrey Spring, a spokesman for the Auto Club.

For all you road trippers, keep in mind that gas prices throughout the state continue to rise in anticipation of a spike in car travel during the summer months.

As of Thursday, the average cost for a gallon of regular in Orange County was $2.57 – a 5 cent jump from Monday and up by a quarter from a month ago.

Top local travel destinations remain the same as for most other holidays: Las Vegas, San Diego, San Francisco, Arizona and California’s Central Coast between Santa Barbara and Monterey.

Friday and Monday are expected to be the heaviest air travel days, according the John Wayne Airport officials.

Traffic will be a bit congested at the airport because of construction just south of Terminal B. A map of the impacted area is available at ocair.com.”

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Posts Tagged ‘Southern California’

DUI Checkpoint Locations

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

From the Daily Pilot:

“The next time you take a party boat out for a cruise outside Newport Harbor, you may want to assign a DB — designated boater.

With a new bill under review in the state Senate, authorities may soon have the authority to suspend boaters’ licenses if they’re caught operating a vessel while intoxicated.

In a bill introduced last month and set to appear before senators next week, Sen. John Benoit (R-Bermuda Dunes) is looking to reauthorize the DMV to suspend boaters’ licenses for boating under the influence, or BUI, convictions.

The DMV has been treating BUIs like their driving counterparts since the mid-1990s, but a court of appeals ruling last year deemed they do not have the authority.

Benoit’s bill gives the DMV that authority and tacks on a alcohol-awareness class just like you’d get if you were convicted of a DUI.

Benoit has experience in DUI enforcement and stresses the need for safety in our waterways. Local harbor patrol officials couldn’t agree more.

“Anybody who operates a vessel has a great deal of responsibility on the waterways. It’s not only for themselves, it’s for the occupants of that vessel,” said Sgt. Steve McCormick of the Orange County Sheriff’s Harbor Patrol in Newport Beach.

“While [boating] is a recreational activity, there are still numerous responsibilities the skipper must take into account.”

Harbor authorities have plenty of leeway when it comes to enforcing drunk boaters, officials said. They can range from simple warnings to citations to arrests, depending on the circumstances, McCormick said.

According to the most recent report by the Department of Boating and Waterways, there were 55 boating accident fatalities in California waters in 2007, half in Southern California waters.

Twenty victims of the statewide total were found to be under the influence of alcohol. Three-quarters involved capsized boats or people falling overboard. Of those who drowned, eight in 10 were not wearing life jackets, according to the report.

Nearly half of the alcohol-related fatalities in the water in 2007 were passengers.

According to the report, “The designated driver concept, which is popular in some boating safety literature, has its roots in automobile safety where the possibility of falling overboard and drowning (or swimming too close to the propeller) is not a factor.”

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Posts Tagged ‘Southern California’

DUI Checkpoint Locations

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Image via Wikipedia

The following article appeared in the OC Register on December 10, 2008:

Number of young women drivers in DUI crashes doubles

Auto Club offers sobering statistics as holiday parties are in full swing.

COSTA MESA – Ladies, before taking that sip of Egg Nog Martini this holiday season, know that you’re now catching up with the fellows in alcohol consumption and auto accidents.

Just in time for the season of Christmas office parties, family get-togethers and other festivities involving holiday cocktails, the Automobile Club of Southern California released a study that says young women are closing the gender gap in the number of injuries and deaths resulting from driving under the influence.

A community forum educating local law enforcement, social service agencies and bar and restaurant owners about the latest trends in alcohol use was held at the Costa Mesa Community Center on Wednesday.

Between 1998 and 2007, the number of women drivers aged 21 to 24 involved in alcohol-related crashes soared by 116 percent, according to an Automobile Club of Southern California study. For men, the number jumped 39 percent in the same period.

Women aged 21-24 who were killed or injured in DUI crashes, whether as drivers, passengers or pedestrians, increased 46 percent to 1,515 in 2007 from 1,037 in 1998 in California, the study found.

Some 4,057 men of the same age range were killed or injured in DUI accidents in 2007, compared to 3,434 in 1998.

Steven Bloch, a researcher for the Auto Club, said that reports of celebrity DUI arrests involving Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie are indicative of a broader trend, and not just Hollywood behaving badly.

“This is part of a larger social trend,” Bloch said. “We like to think of our society as one of equality, but the drinking and driving is not the kind of equality we’re looking for.”

A study by Richard Grucza of the Washington University School of Medicine that was published in the August issue of the medical journal “Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research,” says that the prevalence of alcohol dependence among women has increased in the decades since World War II, but has not increased significantly among men.

The study finds that women are starting to drink at a younger age, which researchers believe is linked to alcohol dependence.

Costa Mesa Police Chief Christopher Shawkey spoke about the department’s alcohol-impaired task force, in which officials offer local bar and restaurant employees training in recognizing when someone is too drunk to be served and how to deny serving them without sounding confrontational.

The city created the program two years ago after the California Department of Motor Vehicles released a report ranking the cities in which people end their nights of drinking before getting arrested for DUI.

Costa Mesa ranked No. 3, with 17.45 per 10,000 adults having had their last drink in that city. The city ranked No. 2 in DUI arrests, with 21.07 arrests for every 10,000 adults, records show. The findings illustrate a trend of people are drinking in coastal cities, officials say.

Aside from Costa Mesa’s training, the police agency will join other departments in the county by holding increased DUI checkpoints and patrols.

Officials said that if you’re going to drink, have a plan for who will be the designated driver, or keep the number of a taxi dispatcher handy. And keep in mind your limit. If a woman who weighs 130 has had four dry martinis within two hours, her estimated blood alcohol level will be .18, the Auto Club says. Four glasses of champagne over the same time period can result in a blood-alcohol level of .08.

While the legal limit is .08, a blood-alcohol level of .05 can deteriorate motor skills, leaving drivers’ muscles more relaxed and coordination slowed.