RED RIBBONS OF HOPE
Wendy Luxford, left, who lost her brother in a crash that involved drinking and driving, joins Sheila Davis and Patti Asseltine of Allstate Insurance to launch MADD Windsor and Essex County’s annual Red Ribbon Campaign.
Windsor held the first red ribbon campaign in Canada almost 30 years ago and despite growing success against drunk driving, the Red Ribbon Project faces a new challenge here and across the country. Drug-impaired driving. “It’s the Number 1 problem on the roads right now,” Andrew Murie, chief executive officer at MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) Canada, said Thursday as MADD red ribbon campaigns were launched across the country.
“It has superseded alcohol and the one that is kind of scary is people aren’t talking about the mixing or the co-use of alcohol and drugs.”
The issue of drug use and driving is pushing MADD groups almost back to their early difficult days of educating people on the dangers of drinking and driving. Even before the legalization of marijuana was expected, the combination of drugs and driving — or worse, drugs, alcohol and driving — started to show up in statistics for fatal car crashes.
“Just as we were starting to make these huge breakthroughs with alcohol, we knew the drug stuff was coming so we didn’t even get a chance to celebrate that success,” Murie said from Ottawa.
MADD Canada isn’t lobbying against marijuana’s legalization but has been pushing for a roadside test that police can use and is in place before marijuana is legalized. Murie said legislation that allows roadside mouth swabs could be in place in 2018.
By 2012, MADD could see the impact of drugs and driving in statistics. There were 2,546 crash deaths in Canada in 2012 and 58.8 per cent of those involved drivers who had some alcohol and/or illegal drugs in their system.
Of those, 24.1 per cent involved drivers with a positive drug reading, usually marijuana, although the level of impairment was not recorded, Murie said.
Almost 19 per cent involved drivers with a positive alcohol reading and 16 per cent of the deaths occurred in crashes with drivers who had positive readings for alcohol and drugs.
People don’t view marijuana as potentially deadly when they’re driving and mistakenly think they are more cautious, Murie said.
In 1980, the fight was against drunk driving when about 60 per cent of road deaths and 70 per cent of the deaths of teens on roadways were alcohol-related. Murie said those numbers have dropped to 30 per cent for teens and around 25 per cent for adults thanks to education, legislation, safer cars and RIDE programs.
Project Red Ribbon launched Thursday in Windsor where it got its start in 1988. Murie credited Dean and Lillian Pegg for starting the red ribbon campaign in Windsor.
Chaouki Hamka, a MADD Windsor and Essex County community leader who learned Thursday that the campaign started locally, said the legalization of marijuana will be a challenge for police, the community and MADD. Hamka told Kennedy High School students during the launch that marijuana, like alcohol, impairs your ability to drive. Four people are killed each day in Canada in crashes involving alcohol and/or drugs and 175 are injured, Hamka said as he tried to get students to imagine losing four of their classmates a day.
Windsor police Sgt. Steve Betteridge congratulated the local MADD group and said the message seems to be getting through to drivers. In 2015, the RIDE program stopped 7,004 vehicles and police laid seven impaired-driving charges and in 2016 Windsor police stopped 8,427 vehicles and found zero impaired drivers.
Criminal Code impaired driving charges can be based on drug use since police are trained to spot impaired driving whether it involves alcohol or drugs, Betteridge said.
He reminded people that police will be looking for impaired drivers as the holidays approach and to call 911 if they suspect a driver is impaired.