Super Bowl Sunday is today.
And AAA Mid-Atlantic and Delaware’s Office of Highway Safety say the big game should be a time for friends, family and football - not fatalities.
Football fans should know that alcohol-impaired traffic fatalities often spike on holidays and on heavy drinking days - like Super Bowl Sunday:
“And unfortunately we did have one fatality in Delaware on Super Bowl Sunday that involved impaired driving, also five other crashes (happened) and 14 DUI arrests (were made). And that’s all according to the Office of Highway Safety. AAA is recommending that people just, once again, just like with New Year’s, just like with any holiday event, plan ahead,” said AAA Spokesman Ken Grant.
Grant says drinking and driving is not a game; it’s a deadly combination and a crime - both of which are 100-percent preventable.
Grant says if you plan to drink, don’t drive; select a designated driver and give them your car keys. If you don’t have a designated driver, ask a sober friend for a ride home; call a cab, or stay where you are and sleep it off until you are sober.
“We also have reported that there were 14 DUI arrests made in Delaware during last year’s Super Bowl. The year before that we had a similar number. But again, the best thing we can message to the public is to plan ahead; if you plan to drink, don’t drive. You also have the ability to text the words “saferide,” one word, to 99000,” said Mitch Topal, the marketing specialist and public information officer with OHS.
Topal says that will take you to a website with a list of safe rides, like Uber, Lyft and phone numbers for all cab companies in Delaware.
The Philadelphia Eagles face the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 52 Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
