GREENVILLE — The Greenville Police Department will join local and national law enforcement officers and highway safety advocates all across the country for the 2016 National “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” campaign.

During the mobilization, officers will be cracking down on motorists, Friday, Aug. 19-Monday, Sept. 5, both day and night.

Did you know?

• Labor Day weekend brings an increase in highway travel and drunk driving, so state and local law enforcement agencies across the nation are stepping up enforcement to crack down on this deadly epidemic and save lives.

• Approximately one-third of all traffic crash fatalities in the United States involve drunk drivers (with blood alcohol concentrations [BACs] of .08 of higher). In 2013, there were 10,076 people killed in these preventable crashes.

• On Labor Day weekend in 2013, there were 424 crash fatalities nationwide. Almost half (48 percent) of those fatal crashes involved drivers who had been drinking (.01+ BAC); 38 percent involved drivers who were drunk (.08+ BAC); and more than a fourth (27 percent) involved drivers who were driving with a BAC almost twice the illegal limit (.15+ BAC).

• In 2013, approximately 1 in 5 child (12 and younger) passenger deaths were in drunk-driving crashes. Seventy-one percent of the time, it was the child’s own driver who was drunk. Of those child passengers killed while riding with a drunk driver, 44 percent weren’t buckled up at the time of the crash.

In addition to the human toll drunk driving takes on our country, the financial impact is devastating as well: based on 2010 numbers (the most recent year for which cost data is available), impaired-driving crashes cost the United States $49.8 billion annually.