Alcohol-related crashes up 50 per cent

Police warn about the dangers of impaired driving over the holidays

Police are reminding Hamiltonians about the dangers of drinking and driving after a major spike in alcohol-related crashes.

There has been a 50 per cent increase in collisions involving alcohol this year over last year, Const. Jerome Stewart said. That’s despite repeated warnings and education campaigns about the dangers of getting behind the wheel after having a few drinks.

“We still don’t seem to have a high enough compliance rate,” Stewart said.

Hamilton police will be out on the roads “in full force” this holiday weekend looking for impaired, aggressive, or distracted drivers, he said.

Stewart and Hamilton emergency room doctor Shawn Mondoux were stressing the dangers of impaired driving over the holidays Friday with a simulation exercise that demonstrated how drinking can affect drivers’ performance behind the wheel.

Mondoux, an academic emergency medicine physician at Hamilton Health Sciences, took at test drive though an obstacle course at a training facility for emergency personnel wearing “impairment goggles.”

Mondoux — who noted his judgment and reaction time weren’t affected by alcohol as a truly impaired driver’s would be — missed stop signs, almost ran into several obstacles, and had trouble parking, despite driving around five or 10 kilometres an hour.

Alcohol was a factor in about 20 per cent of vehicle-related trauma cases at Hamilton Health Sciences last year. Mondoux says head injuries are the most common he sees in alcohol-related cases. Many result in permanent brain damage, spinal cord injuries or paralysis.

About 80 per cent of the alcoholrelated crashes in the ER involve men, Mondoux said. It’s unclear why men are so much more likely to have alcohol-related trauma, he added, though it may be related to the fact that men are generally more likely to engage in risk-taking on the road.

The vast majority of patients Mondoux sees in alcohol-related traumas end up going into surgery — some for broken bones, and others for more serious injuries like internal bleeding or a head injury.

“We have a lot of people who get into accidents and don’t necessarily think they’re that impaired,” he said. “But you see all of these injuries as a physician and think, ‘I’m just never going do to that.’”