Fort Drum soldiers now have a new option for getting home safely after a night out: a volunteer-run chapter of the Drunk Driving Prevention Program (DDPP), relaunched on post in early September. It offers free, confidential rides home — and your car gets a ride too.
Here’s how it works. Service members register at ddpp.us and sign a liability waiver ahead of time. After that, they can call 315-563-3222 on weekends and holidays between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m., anywhere within a 30-mile radius of Fort Drum. A volunteer driver comes out, drives you home, and drives your vehicle home with you. The service is open to all valid DoD ID card holders, including family members and civilian employees.
The detail that matters most is confidentiality. DDPP operates as a non-federal entity, and chapter president Capt. DeMeuse says client information is never shared with unit leadership or the chain of command. “Confidentiality is the hallmark of the program and why it is so successful,” he told Fort Drum public affairs. “Soldiers don’t have to worry that calling for a ride will somehow get back to their unit.”
That design choice tells you what the real barrier has always been. It isn’t that soldiers don’t know drunk driving is dangerous. It’s that asking for help has historically felt like confessing to your boss. A program that structurally removes that fear is smarter than another safety briefing — it meets people where the hesitation actually lives.
The stakes are not abstract. DeMeuse said he has personally known good soldiers whose careers were derailed by impaired driving, and described DWIs as a systemic issue across the Army: “It’s in every formation, and it ruins careers.” One bad decision on a Saturday night can end a career, a clearance, and years of work.
This is also a second chance for the program itself. Fort Drum previously had an active DDPP chapter with more than 100 volunteers before it disbanded in 2021, largely due to leadership turnover. The Army Volunteer Corps says continuity planning is part of the relaunch this time. Whether the program sticks around will depend on exactly that — volunteers keep showing up, leaders keep promoting it.
The early signs are encouraging. DeMeuse has been briefing units across post, and at least one first sergeant has already had his entire formation put the dispatch number in their phones. He’s also visiting local establishments frequented by the Fort Drum community to spread the word. That grassroots, leader-to-soldier approach is what the chapter president himself says will drive change.
Here’s the practical part, and it’s the most important paragraph in this post: register before you need it. The waiver and registration happen at ddpp.us — do it on a quiet Tuesday, not at 2 a.m. outside a bar. Put 315-563-3222 in your phone tonight. And if you’re a military family member or a civilian employee on post, know that this covers you too.
For the surrounding community, there’s a local angle worth noting. A 30-mile radius from Fort Drum covers Watertown and much of the surrounding area — the same corridors where soldiers drive home on dark, rural North Country roads, in every season this region throws at them. Anything that shortens those drives’ risk is good for more than just the person in the passenger seat.
Small program, big signal. The most interesting thing about this relaunch isn’t the free ride — it’s that the Army looked honestly at why soldiers weren’t asking for help, and built the answer around that instead.
Sources: Fort Drum Garrison Public Affairs, September 3, 2026. Registration and volunteer info at ddpp.us.