If you are planning on breaking any Florida traffic laws especially the ones surrounding drunk driving in Florida, the Florida Highway Patrol will be looking for you this Labor Day weekend. The FHP is planning on saturating Florida roads and highways this weekend in hopes of keeping drivers all over the state of Florida safe as they travel this holiday weekend. Combine Labor Day with two home football games in Tallahassee and Gainesville and there is the potential for a busy three-day weekend on Florida highways.
The FHP is joining with what the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel is thousands of other law enforcement agencies to beef up patrols through Monday. According to the FHP they issued a Florida traffic citation approximately 16,000 times last Labor Day weekend and on top of that there were 136 arrests of drunk drivers or impaired drivers. Last year there were a reported 23 traffic fatalities over the holiday weekend which was a third less than the amount in 2008.

Officers who are usually assigned to office duty are being called upon to help patrol the roads from Pensacola to Key West. The waterways will be patrolled more heavily as well and the threshold for operating a boat while impaired by alcohol is much lower than that of an automobile. If you have a blood alcohol level of just 0.02 and are operating a boat you are considered impaired under Florida law.
Roadside sobriety checkpoints have been schedule all over the state with law enforcement stating their number one goal is the safety of Florida’s drivers. The Bradenton Police Department has already gone on record that they will be stepping up DUI enforcement this weekend. The same goes for Pinellas County and expect to see extra law enforcement out in Tampa and throughout Hillsborough County.