Here’s a no-brainer: drinking alcohol and driving still don’t mix. However, the head-scratcher is that people still do it.

Redmond Police have arrested 152 people for DUI so far this year, according to Redmond Police spokesperson Lt. Charlie Gorman.

This holiday season, police officers, state troopers and county deputies are showing no patience for impaired drivers, and they are being persistent in finding them.

The Eastside DUI Task Force started its holiday emphasis on Nov. 20 and will patrol every Friday and Saturday night from 8 p.m.-3 a.m. through the end of the year, with its focus on finding impaired drivers.

The task force, which includes police departments from Redmond, Kirkland, Woodinville, Duvall, Carnation, North Bend, Snoqualmie, Issaquah, Bellevue, Clyde Hill, Mercer Island and Medina, is funded by the Washington State Traffic Commission, which has launched X52, a state-wide campaign involving all levels of law enforcement to find — and arrest — impaired drivers.

I got the opportunity to do a police officer ride-along last Friday during a foggy, cold night with Redmond Police officer Marty Fuller, who was on patrol with the Eastside DUI Task Force in his unmarked 2006 Dodge Charger.

The boundaries for the Eastside DUI Task Force are “basically the Avondale Corridor to the east, north to Northeast 160th Street, west to the Kirkland waterfront and south to Northeast 8th Street in Bellevue,” Fuller said.

The purpose of the task force is to patrol the designated area, pull over drivers for any sort of traffic infraction — from speeding to driving with a burnt-out tail light — and then check to see if the driver is impaired in any way, according to Fuller.

“We’re looking for impairment because that’s our focus,” said Fuller, who joined Redmond Police eight years ago after a career in construction. “So we’re going to go and make a lot of stops and see if we can find any impaired drivers out there. … DUI is alcohol and/or drugs. If I see any impairment then I’m going to investigate.”

The biggest thing Fuller said he looks for is drivers weaving in their lane. A lot of times, impaired drivers are so focused on going the speed limit, they don’t pay attention to controlling the wheel.

“Or they are so focused on staying in their lane, they are traveling 20 miles an hour under the speed limit,” Fuller said of impaired drivers. “They can’t concentrate, they can’t divide their attention to do all those tasks” to drive safely.

During my four-hour ride-along from 8 p.m.-midnight, Fuller pulled over about a dozen different drivers for a myriad of traffic infractions. Did you know it’s against the law to have any sort of blue light on your vehicle? During the ride-along, Fuller issued one speeding ticket on SR 520 — the driver was going 80 miles an hour in the carpool lane on slick conditions, but was not impaired, according to Fuller.

Fuller did not arrest anyone during my ride-along and in fact, he did not find any impaired drivers that warranted a field sobriety test.

On Monday, Fuller told me he did make a DUI arrest early Saturday morning — after I left — at the end of his shift. Upon further investigation, Fuller found out that the man was headed to an apartment complex where he had a no-contact order.

Fuller was able to find all this out because of a traffic stop — a stop he may not have made if there was no Eastside DUI Task Force. And in the end, he made an arrest before a potentially much more dangerous situation broke out.

Officers working on the Eastside DUI Task Force are paid overtime and are funded by the state traffic commission, which sets a benchmark of three traffic stops per hour. There were 100 traffic stops made by the officers from the Eastside Task Force that Friday night, with eight arrests made, according to Gorman.

Fuller said he enjoys working the Eastside DUI Task Force and plans to work the New Year’s Eve shift, which expects to be a busy one. Fuller’s main job for Redmond Police is to investigate all the serious-injury collisions in Redmond, pointing out that most serious-injury collisions are caused by the driver either being too aggressive, inattentive or impaired.

Drinking alcohol affects your “eye sight, coordination … it affects a number of things that you need to drive a car safely,” Fuller said.

So if you drink and drive, you are rolling the dice with major consequences, the least of which is a DUI arrest. Worse than becoming an arrest statistic, you could end up with a death certificate.

The message is simple: Don’t drink and drive. That’s true every single day of the year, but the message often hits home harder during the holidays when more people are out socializing. If you plan to get festive this holiday season with some spiked egg nog, please don’t drive. Call a cab or a sober family member — it will save you a huge headache and maybe even a life.

Bill Christianson can be reached at bchristianson@redmond-reporter.com or at (425) 867-0353.