DUI ARRESTS UP IN SCV REGION NATIONAL FATALITIES SHOWING INCREASE.

Byline: Amy Raisin Darvish Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - The number of local drunk driving arrests increased every year but one from 1999 through 2004, echoing a disturbing national trend that includes a spike in alcohol-related fatal crashes, according to a new study.

The California Highway Patrol's Newhall station - which enforces the law on highways from just south of the Grapevine on Interstate 5 as well as a lengthy stretch of the Antelope Valley Freeway - reported an overall increase in the number of DUI arrests from 1999 through 2004.

The 868 DUI arrests in 2000 topped the previous year's total by 13. The CHP Newhall station made 978 DUI arrests in 2001, followed by 1,012 in 2002.

That number dipped slightly in 2003, when the Newhall station logged 987 arrests. But 2004 brought the highest DUI arrest total in six years, with 1,026, according to Officer Wendy Hahn of the Newhall station.

According to a report published in the May issue of The American Journal of Preventive Medicine, alcohol-related auto crashes nationwide went down by slightly more than 1 percent a year from 1993 to 1997, dropping from 123 million incidents to 116 million.

But the national decline in drinking-related auto crashes that began in the early 1990s may be over, as such crashes rose a disturbing 37 percent between 1997 and 1999 alone, reaching a total of 159 million drinking-related crashes per year by 2002.

``This is a real call for action, because we clearly are going in the wrong direction,'' said survey co-researcher Dr. Robert H. Brewer, an alcohol team leader at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

The number of people killed in drunk-driving crashes also has risen, from 16,573 in 1999 to 17,013 in 2003, added Dr. Kyran P. Quinlan, who worked on the report while at the CDC. Quinlan is now a clinical associate in pediatrics at the University of Chicago.

In the area patrolled by the CHP Newhall station, however, the number of alcohol-related fatalities has been spotty. There were seven DUI fatality crashes in 1999, followed by four in 2000. But that number doubled the following year, with eight deaths in 2001.

The death toll dropped in consecutive years in 2002 and 2003, with five fatalities and one fatality, respectively. But 2004 marked another increase, with four people dying in alcohol-related crashes that year.

State officials, concerned with the increase both across the nation and in California, awarded $4.7 million in grants to 156 local police departments to conduct sobriety checkpoints throughout 2005 and into January 2006.

Auto crashes remain the leading cause of death of Americans between 1 and 34 years of age, according to the study, and 30 percent of Americans can expect to be involved in an alcohol-related crash in their lifetimes. The economic cost of these crashes is estimated at more than $50 billion a year.

HealthDay News contributed to this story.

Amy Raisin Darvish, [phone]

amy.raisin(at)dailynews.com