50 people killed statewide in DUI crashes during New Year’s Eve extended weekend

CHP patrol car in San Francisco, Calif. on Wednesday, June 26, 2014. CHP patrol car in San Francisco, Calif. on Wednesday, June 26, 2014. Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close 50 people killed statewide in DUI crashes during New Year’s Eve extended weekend 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Fifty people died in crashes involving drivers under the influence of drugs or alcohol over the extended New Year’s weekend, a jump from 40 deaths reported the same time the previous year, authorities said Wednesday.

No one was killed by an impaired driver in the Bay Area this year. John Fransen, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol’s Golden Gate Division, attributed that success to the division’s “proactive” approach.

CHP officers arrested 1,140 people statewide for driving under the influence. Of the arrests, CHP’s Golden Gate Division, which oversees all nine Bay Area counties, arrested 222 drivers under the influence between 6:01 p.m. on Dec. 28 and 11:59 p.m. on Jan. 1.

In 2017, CHP Officer Andrew Camilleri Sr. was killed in a Christmas Eve crash on Interstate 880 in Hayward by a speeding driver under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

“We lost one of our own, and unfortunately, he was struck and killed by a DUI driver,” Fransen said. “Officers took that to heart and they definitely took a hard-line and zero-tolerance approach to impaired drivers.”

The numbers are a small jump over DUI rates reported during the previous year’s New Year’s Eve celebrations. According to CHP, 936 people were arrested statewide for impaired driving last year over a 78-hour period.

However, officials said the increases in arrests might be linked to a lengthened maximum enforcement period, when all available officers are on duty, because the New Year’s Day holiday fell on a Tuesday.

“It is not comparable to last year’s, because this one was one full day longer,” said Jaime Coffee, a CHP spokeswoman.

The New Year’s Eve holiday enforcement period was not the deadliest for California, though. The deadliest in 2018 was during the Thanksgiving holiday enforcement period, when 59 people died in DUI-involved crashes, according to CHP.

Gwendolyn Wu is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: gwendolyn.wu@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @gwendolynawu