Arizona officials release DUI enforcement statistics for 2024 holiday season
Jan 7, 2025, 8:00 PM
PHOENIX – Arizona officials released the holiday season DUI statistics for 2024 on Monday, showing an overall decline in arrests from 2023 but a higher daily average.
The new Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety report covered Thursdays to Saturdays each week of December, along with Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, a combined 14 days.
The report showed 1,354 aggravated and misdemeanor DUI arrests for the season, which works out to an average of nearly 97 per day.
The 2024 total was hundreds lower than in 2023, when the holiday season DUI statistics included 1,550 arrests for aggravated and misdemeanor cases. However, 2023 holiday DUI task force enforcement covered 17 days, for a daily average of just over 91 arrests.
What else do 2024 holiday season DUI statistics say?
Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety tallies extreme DUIs, which are cases where driver’s blood alcohol content (BAC) exceeds 0.15%, separately from aggravated and misdemeanor cases.
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The 2024 trend for extreme cases was similar to what was seen from the holiday season DUI statistics for aggravated and misdemeanor incidents, with a lower total than 2023 but a higher average.
The new report lists 183 extreme DUI arrests, which comes to just over 13 per day. Meanwhile, the 2023 report had 213 extreme DUI arrests for a daily average of about 12.5.
The daily averages increased even though fewer Arizona officers and deputies participated in holiday season DUI enforcement this year. There were 9,653 participants in 2023 but just 7,169 last month.
Despite the shorter timeframe, the 2024 report documented an overall year-over-year increase on one category: seat belt citations.
In fact, a whopping 684 seat belt citations were issued in the 2024 enforcement period, up from 535 a year earlier.
The Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety previously released separate DUI enforcement data for New Year’s Eve.
