Almost one person a day in the Santa Clarita Valley gets behind the wheel under the influence, and gets arrested for a DUI.

In 2014, there were 290 DUI arrests made by Santa Clarita Valley station deputies alone, said Sgt. Rich Cohen of the station’s Traffic Unit. 

Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station deputies responded to 1,932 traffic collisions in 2014, Cohen said, which resulted in 800 injuries.

Of those traffic collisions in Santa Clarita, 41 were alcohol involved collisions, said Cohen, and 96 people were injured.

“Alcohol is the oldest drug around,” said Cary Quashen, of Action Family Counseling in Valencia. “But it’s also the deadliest.”

There was one DUI collision in 2014 that ended with one fatality, Cohen said.

Dylan Tyler Zimmerman, a 20-year-old Valencia man was killed when his car was hit by an intoxicated driver in February of 2014.

Every day, around 30 people in the United States die in motor vehicle collisions that involve an alcohol-impaired driver, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This amounts to one death every 51 minutes.

The annual cost of alcohol-related crashes totals more than $59 billion, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We need to stop fooling ourselves,” Quashen said. “If you think you might have a problem with alcohol, you do.”

About Action Family Counseling 

Action Family Counseling has drug and alcohol residential treatment locations in Santa Clarita, Piru, and Bakersfield; Intensive Drug and Alcohol Outpatient in Santa Clarita, Simi Valley, Ventura, Pasadena, and Bakersfield, Action Family Counseling is here to help you.

Action Family Counseling primary goals are to maintain abstinence, stabilize co-occurring illnesses, and increase quality of life. We support and reinforce change in behavior patterns so that adolescents and adults, or clients and their families can fully indoctrinate the philosophies and principles needed to remain abstinent and stabilized for life.

Action Family Counseling accomplishes this by providing an effective treatment approach developed by the Department of Health and Human Services that includes a multi-disciplinarian personalized approach by a treatment team. Once a patient is identified, we provide an initial screening and assessment, which allows us to properly diagnose and place patients in the appropriate treatment setting.

Once a patient completes our intake process to our residential program he or she receives 24-hour crisis management, individual counseling, group therapy, family education and counseling, treatment planning, routine and random toxicology screening, pharmacotherapy and medication management, education about Alcohol and Other Drugs and mental health issues, self-help and support group orientation, case management services, and discharge service planning with a transitional service plan to our Intensive Outpatient treatment program to ensure a continuum of care.