Montana Highway Patrol Sees Less Drunk Drivers New Year’s Eve

Despite it being New Year’s Eve, it was a pretty quiet night. Montana Highway Patrol was pleased to not have a lot of drunk drivers out on the road.

Woody Bateman has been a trooper with the Montana Highway Patrol for two years. Nights like New Year’s Eve are always a concern when out on the roads.

"New Year's Eve or any holiday known for drinking, like I said before, leads to people over drinking and people making poor decisions," said Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Woody Bateman.

This holiday though, was a rarely quiet night for Bateman, which pleases him.

"As far as safety goes, it was a good night for Montana, in the Missoula area we saw two DUI's from about 3 P.M. to 3 A.M," said Bateman.

Montana Highway Patrol and Montana Department of Transportation made a decision to have extra troopers on the roads.

"We had our safety enforcement traffic team here in the Missoula area, which there were five members from our team out tonight and then the local troopers, so we had a large number for the local Missoula area," said Bateman.

All in all, Bateman tells us Montana Highway Patrol is glad to see less drunk driving and traffic citations on the holiday.

Bateman tells me that because New Year’s Eve is a holiday where many people go out and drink, they tend to find more drunk drivers on the road.