If You're Drinking on New Year's Eve and Need a Ride, DART and Coors Have You Covered

It happens every year. Someone has a little too much to drink celebrating the end of the year. Their friends insist they get a ride home but they insist they are good enough to drive and ignore them.

The National Safety Council estimates more than 400 people will die in traffic fatalities during this year's New Year's holiday. A noticeable number of those accidents will be caused by people who chose to drive even though they've been drinking.

The Dallas Rapid Transit (DART) and Molson Coors, the parent company of Coors and Coors Light beers, are bringing back a free ride program for the New Year's Eve holiday to ensure that those estimates aren't as accurate this year.

The free DART rail rides will start at 6 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 31, and will run until the end of service the following morning. Rides will be available on DART buses, light rail, paratransit services, GoLink on-demand and Trinity Railway Express commuter rail service between Eddie Bernice Johnson Union Station and CentrePort/DFW Airport rail station.

Anyone who plans on taking advantage of the free ride program this New Year's can look up the routes at dart.org.

"Molson Coors remains committed to championing alcohol responsibility in the communities it serves," said Molson Coors community affairs manager Alison Hanrahan in a released statement. "It's an honor to contribute to the night's festivities across Dallas and welcome in 2024 together. By partnering with DART, our hope is to not only provide free rides, but to foster a sense of community and responsibility as we collectively celebrate this new chapter."

Molson Coors has been promoting free rides on New Year's Eve since 1988 in cities across the U.S. including Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas, Milwaukee, Phoenix and others. Last year, the company reported that nearly 28,000 local citizens took advantage of the free ride program on New Year's Eve and Day. The company also offers free rides on other holidays where people are known for imbibing one too many drinks, such as St. Patrick's Day and professional sports events.

The city of Dallas and the state of Texas are also implementing new awareness campaigns and initiatives to prevent people from driving drunk on New Year's and to prosecute those caught drinking and driving. The Texas Department of Transportation's "Drive Sober. No Regrets." awareness campaign has been urging people to plan ahead of their New Year's celebrations by picking a designated driver, calling a taxi or rideshare like Uber or Lyft or using public transportation to get them home safely.

Last year, the Dallas County District Attorney's Office and the Dallas Police Department formed a special vehicular crimes unit to aggressively pursue convictions against drunk drivers whose actions caused fatalities on roadways using personnel who have "specialized knowledge and training regarding investigating and prosecuting motor vehicle crash cases," according to a statement released by the DA's office.

Manslaughter and accidents involving deaths are second-degree felonies that carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, according to the Texas Penal Code.