MADD wants to drop the ‘A’ word
Back in January, Kings District RCMP identified the suspect of an assault on a police officer that occurred on Highbury Road in New Minas.
The incident took place just before 2 a.m., as police stopped a blue 2010 Hyundai after noticing the driver was travelling erratically. An officer’s foot was run over by the impaired driver as he tried to flee.
Ten days later a 26-year-old Enfield male was arrested and now faces well over a dozen charges. Several involve drugs.
Frustration is the word that the CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Canada uses to describe the kind of road crime that injured that Kings officer.
Steve Sullivan sees that impaired driving continues to be an issue in Nova Scotia despite the best efforts of MADD and law enforcement.
“For the people who we work with who have lost a loved one or been injured in an impaired driving crash, their losses or injuries were so easily preventable if somebody had made a different decision,” Sullivan told City News in January.
Statistics for 2023 that were released by Nova Scotia RCMP showed the force laid 830 charges of impaired driving by drugs or alcohol during the year, up from 802 in 2022 and 770 in 2021.
The number of charges of refusing a breathalyzer or drug test was 120, down from 133 in 2022. There were 114 in 2021. Of course, those numbers only include RCMP jurisdictions, not municipalities with their own police forces.
Halifax Regional Police (HRP), which is the largest municipal force in the province, laid 341 charges in 2023, up from 279 in 2022 and 254 in 2021. There were 73 refusals in the regional municipality, down from 98 the year before but higher than the 46 in 2021.
Sullivan opined that police have some different tools now.
“They have mandatory alcohol screening, which means they can ask any driver they lawfully stop to give a breath sample for alcohol… so it’s easier to get those demands and breath samples from drivers. The more people you ask, the more you’re going to catch.”
Sullivan noted that as more officers receive training in detecting drug impairment, the number of charges for drug impaired driving will also go up, which will also bump up the statistics.
Last year, 85 of the RCMP charges laid and 80 of those by HRP were for drivers being impaired by drugs.
Sullivan said that whether there are more people driving impaired or enforcement is just better, the numbers
“are still way too high and too many people are making a decision to drive impaired. There are no excuses. It’s frustrating and disappointing.”
He added there is still no one solution to the problem.
“Ultimately, it’s down to people’s personal responsibility. We all have to make a choice. There are so many alternatives to driving impaired.”
The news nationally is bad. Canada’s drunk driving deaths are still the highest across all developed countries.
In a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Canada ranked first for a huge 34 per cent of all motor vehicle deaths related to alcohol, in cases where the risks leading to death were known.
Last December in Ontario, the provincial police said more people were caught driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs compared to the prior year. Road crashes involving drugs or alcohol also increased, according to the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP).
Sgt. Kerry Schmidt told CBC that the total number of impaired driving charges laid in 2023 were about 10,000, which is a 16 per cent increase compared to the year before.
Schmidt said OPP officers were called to a total 1,800 impaired driving crashes in 2023, a 10 per cent increase compared to 2022.
On one night in December 2023, police in British Columbia stopped 222 impaired drivers. RCMP Cpl. Dave Noon reacted on X, formerly known as Twitter, saying:
“All of these drivers had the potential to seriously injure or kill a family, an individual or themselves.”
To reflect the entirely preventable nature of impaired driving, and the related crashes, deaths and injuries, MADD Canada has been asking everyone to drop the ‘A’ word. Impaired driving is absolutely not an accident.