Shelby County is working hard to cut down on drunken driving in the county, state and country, as evidenced by the DUI Breath Alcohol Testing program, located at the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences’ Implied Consent Laboratory in Calera.

Since more than 13,000 law enforcement officers from all over Alabama have received training in DUI testing and using equipment, we know those officers are heading back to their homes and making their streets safer by working smarter.

That training not only gets drunken drivers off the streets, it gets them their deserved punishment. We’re lucky enough to have some of the most advanced equipment in the field, with extremely reliable test results. Since those test results are accepted as evidence in court, officers know their hard work won’t go for naught.

Since drunk driving was a factor in 42 percent of last year’s traffic fatalities in Alabama, cutting down on DUIs is essential to making our highways as safe as possible.

We’ll soon see more traffic on the road with Thanksgiving and Christmas within the next few weeks. The roads will be dangerous enough — when alcohol is added to the mix, things can turn deadly. We’re glad to see Gov. Bob Riley is committed to working on this problem, both with an increased officer presence on the roads and with better equipment so offenders won’t be free to commit the same mistakes a second time.