The Colorado State Patrol made its own New Year’s Resolutions for 2025: By the end of the year, the department hopes to cut fatal and serious-injury crashes caused by impaired drivers by 15%, state patrol officials said.

“When you let data drive your decisions, impaired driving becomes a blinking red light,” state patrol chief Col. Matthew Packard said. “Everyone is impacted by this issue.”

Packard said about one-third of crash fatalities in Colorado happen at the hands of an impaired driver, whether the driver dies or they kill someone else. Cracking down on impaired driving is the most important thing the department can do to “move the needle” and save lives, he said.

According to data from the state patrol, which generally covers unincorporated roads in Colorado, more than 200 people were killed in crashes involving an impaired driver on Colorado’s roads in 2024. Nearly 300 more were injured — and that’s only in crashes that the state patrol responded to.

State patrol data typically excludes anything that happens in a city, whether that’s Dove Creek or Denver or Delta, Packard said.

Still, Packard said that fatal and serious-injury crashes involving impaired drivers were down nearly 20% in 2024 from 2023 and proactive arrests — where impaired drivers are pulled over and arrested before a crash happens — went up more than 10%.

“It’s no question that we’ve been moving in the right direction, but … over the course of the last five years, we still have work to do,” Packard said. “I know for a fact that when we look at crash data from 2019 and even 2020 there were fewer crashes. The roads are not as safe today as they were in 2019.”

The most impaired crashes happen between 5 p.m. and 2:30 a.m., around the times bars close, Packard said. But crashes still happen after 2:30 a.m. and before 5 p.m., he said.

“This is an around-the-clock issue,” Packard said. “Alcohol is still far and away the leading impaired substance. It’s more accessible, so it makes sense, but we’re seeing increases in other substances as well.”

State and national data on DUIs with other substances, including marijuana, is still immature, Packard said, but some Colorado-based attorneys estimate about 8% of DUI arrests include a mix of marijuana and alcohol and 7% of arrests are exclusively marijuana-related.

“Sometimes a DUI doesn’t stop a person from reoffending,” said Wendy Forbes, communications director for the state patrol. “One would think that that would have a major impact on your life and you would never see the same person get a second DUI. Unfortunately, we know that that’s not always the case.”

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, about one-third of the 1.5 million people arrested each year for drunken driving are repeat offenders. The risk of being involved in an alcohol-related traffic crash increases by about 20% with each additional DUI a person receives.

Part of the issue is visibility — people feel safe to break the law and drive carelessly on Colorado roads because the visual threat of the state patrol isn’t always there, Packard said.

“We’re not as visible as I’d like us to be,” he said. “When you have 740 troopers in a state that’s got 6.5 million people, we can’t be everywhere we want to be. It’s really frustrating when you see somebody doing something unsafe and there’s not a trooper right there to address that issue.”

Packard said the state patrol is trying to hire — 87 new troopers graduated from the academy in 2024 and even more are on track to graduate throughout 2025 — but they’re also asking active troopers to examine the data and try to find where they’re most needed on a day-to-day basis.

“I don’t want a trooper to sit in a blind curve where we know we can sneak up and find people that are making mistakes,” he said. “Writing a citation is not about the ‘Gotcha!;’ it’s about being in the position where we can have the biggest impact on safety.”

The state patrol is taking two paths to crack down on impaired driving in 2025: training and education.

First, Colorado State Patrol officials will provide troopers with more quarterly training on impaired driving topics, Packard said. That includes everything from how to conduct a breath-alcohol test to typical DUI behaviors troopers should watch for.

Packard said the state patrol is also in the process of implementing an impaired driving enforcement team.

“It’s not a full-time assignment yet, but certain troopers have demonstrated passion and high skill in impaired driving enforcement-related activities and they’re on a team that will conduct monthly operations around the state,” Packard said.

Alongside traditional education campaigns, like spreading information on social media or purchasing billboards and radio advertisements, Forbes said the state patrol will also roll out a pilot program aimed at keeping drunken drivers from reoffending.

Forbes said the state patrol’s community outreach team will work with people in Boulder County who have recently had their first DUI offense. They’ll connect with those people, have conversations, share victim impact statements and try to drive home the seriousness of the situation in a setting outside of the courtroom.

“This outreach that we’re starting in Boulder County will expand over time (across Colorado) to have that connection and do a better job of helping folks find the treatment that they need, whatever that looks like,” said Packard, who also called drunken driving an addiction.