December is Impaired Driving Awareness Month, and the Jasper RCMP is stepping up enforcement to try to crack down on what remains one of the most serious road safety concerns in Canada.
According to a press release from the Alberta RCMP, alcohol has been a factor in 30-40 per cent of road deaths for the past 15 years in Canada.
The issue is especially concerning in Alberta, where Statistics Canada numbers indicate the impaired driving rate is 70 per cent higher than the national average.
To help combat drinking and driving, the Jasper RCMP will join detachments across the country to participate in the National Impaired Driving Initiative, Dec. 6.
Across the country they will set up check stops, with the hope of catching drunk drivers and educating the public on the dangers of driving under the influence.
Scott Kirychuk, a member of the Jasper RCMP, said in an interview Dec. 1 that his detachment will have extra manpower on the road that night—four or five members, as opposed to the usual two or three.
“We are just going to stop every vehicle that moves in a certain area of town,” he said. “So anything that’s moving, we’re going to pull them over, do a document check—so license and registration, insurance—and do a sobriety check as well.”
Each year the RCMP conducts several similar operations, and Kirychuk said they always seem to catch someone, whether it’s a drunk driver, someone with drugs in their car or people who get 24-hour license suspensions for being too drunk to drive, but not quite drunk enough to charge.
And while he said it’s nice to have drunk drivers off the road, what the RCMP really wants to see is no drunk drivers at all.
“A lot of our success is just with the education part of it all—just talking to the people who are doing a good job, letting them know that they’re doing a good job; that they’re doing the right thing,” Kirychuk said.
“A lot of people we pull over are designated drivers, with a car full of people who are intoxicated, which is really nice to see.”
Kirychuk said that Christmas is one of the RCMP’s busiest times, and he hopes people will stay smart over the holidays—a time of year that presents even more opportunities than usual to make a bad choice.
“We just hope that people who are going to the Christmas parties, especially the local people, are smart enough to use taxis and to walk instead of driving.”
Trevor Nichols
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