The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration announced recently that drunk driving deaths in Iowa were up by almost 30 percent in 2006.

Dena Gray-Fisher, spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Transportation, said Iowa had the sixth-lowest percentage of drunk driving fatalities compared to total traffic fatalities nationally, but Iowa has been second lowest in the nation before.

“Iowa has traditionally been low in crashes, when compared to crash [rates] in other states,” Gray-Fisher said. “We have a relatively low amount of crashes, but the new statistic looks high because if you have one crash one year and have two the next, then it looks like it has doubled. It’s a distorted way to look at it.”

Gray-Fisher said the .08 blood alcohol legislation, along with stiff penalties for convictions, including jail time, a loss of license and heavy penalty fines, along with rehabilitation, has kept the numbers in Iowa low.

Educational ad campaigns, such as “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” have also had a positive impact on the number of alcohol-related fatalities, Gray-Fisher said.

“Iowa has culturally and socially changed their behaviors in that everyone knows that they should not take that next drink because it [will put you] over the limit,” Gray-Fisher said.

When asked about alcohol companies’ ads having a “don’t drink and drive” message in them, Gray-Fisher said any ad campaign promoting social responsibility had a good message.

The new ad campaign, titled “Drunk Driving. Over The Limit. Under Arrest,” of which Gray-Fisher said there is no DOT money behind, works as a public service announcement and is going up on message boards and public places everywhere beginning Friday.

The ad campaign is going up now because of the upcoming Labor Day weekend holiday, said SAC Jim Saunders, public information officer for the Iowa State Patrol, because “summer months and holiday times all tend to lead to higher amounts of alcohol-related infractions.”

“We want people to know that the Iowa State Patrol is allocating a lot of resources to enforce traffic laws,” Saunders said.

The specific reason for the recent small hike in alcohol-related fatalities is “hard to say, specifically,” but Saunders said that statistically speaking, it’s not a trend.

The ways the Iowa State Patrol plans on approaching the enforcement of driving infractions during the holiday weekend are to work with local enforcement officials to educate people about the dangers of drinking and driving and working on “enforcement projects.”

“We want to let people know that we are out there and we will be enforcing all traffic violations, along with a zero-tolerance policy. We want people to know that the reality is that you can go to jail,” Saunders said. “If we can keep people from drinking and driving, then we’ve done our job.”