July 4th celebrations often include cook-outs, picnics, boating, time spent with family and friends and, of course, fireworks. But for too many Americans, the nation’s annual celebration is filled with tragedy, as it is one of the deadliest holidays of the year when it comes to alcohol-impaired traffic fatalities.

The Avoid the 6 El Dorado County DUI Task Force will be out in full force during the 4th of July holiday weekend cracking down on impaired drivers with an aggressive DUI enforcement blitz to include a sobriety-driver’s license checkpoint and DUI saturation patrols.

Extra DUI roving patrols will be conducted July 1-4 in South Lake Tahoe. CHP will assign all available officers to the region’s freeways, state highways and unincorporated roads beginning 6pm Friday through midnight Monday.

Statistics gathered from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over the past 25 years show that, on average, nearly half of all deadly traffic crashes over each year’s July 4th holiday involved some level of alcohol.