Police, MADD disappointed with number of impaired drivers in eastern Ontario so far this year

OPP are seeing an uptick in the number of people in the region driving under the influence. CTV’s Jack Richardson reports.

Impaired driving in eastern Ontario does not appear to be declining, according to statistics from Ontario Provincial Police (OPP).

According to Bill Dickson, spokesperson for the OPP East Region, 41 drivers in the region were charged with impaired driving between March 10 and 16. Ottawa police also reported 17 drivers were charged with driving under the influence in the city over the weekend.

“It’s somewhat disturbing in the fact that there are still impaired drivers out there,” Dickson said. “Not the numbers, necessarily, but just the fact that there are still people who are choosing to consume alcohol and drugs and then get behind the wheel.”

Some of the drivers were charged as a result of 152 RIDE checks police conducted last week. Others were charged following traffic stops or as a result of collision investigations, the OPP said.

So far this year, 357 drivers have been charged with impaired driving as of March 12. That’s up from 319 at the same time last year.

“We’re very disappointed, of course, to see that the numbers are not going down,” said Valerie Keyes, the President of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) for the Ottawa area.

“We talk to as many people as we possibly can. We hope that the message is getting out.”

MADD has been an established organization in Canada since 1989, advocating for people to make smart decisions before getting behind the wheel.

The message has remained similar all along, but these recent statistics are disheartening, according to Keyes.

“Impaired driving is exceedingly dangerous,” she told CTV News. “We don’t, at the moment, have any way of telling the effectiveness of the message, except for we’d like to see the stats going down.”

Dickson added that raising awareness about impaired driving is not new for the OPP, but it seems to be falling on deaf ears.

“We’ve been talking about the dangers of this for a long time,” he explained.

“But no matter what everyone seems to do, no matter what MADD does, no matter what police do right across the country, here in Ontario, we see it. People are still choosing to get behind the wheel after consuming alcohol or drugs.”