Review staff:
If you’re reading this, consider it your one and only warning.
That’s the message coming from the Rimbey Detachment of the RCMP when it comes to those who choose to drink and drive, especially in light of all the Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties that’ll soon be underway.
RCMP Detachment throughout the province, in conjunction with the Alberta Sheriffs Department, will be taking an aggressive approach to reduce the incidents of drinking and driving throughout the holiday season and are warning the public that if they choose to drink and drive, they will be caught.
“I was at a STARS conference the other day in Rocky Mountain House and they’ve got two new helicopters that they’re going to have in service next summer and in talking to those guys, they’re always busy picking up carnage off the highways and transporting them to hospitals as a result of people drinking and driving,” said Cst. Bill Coulthard of the Rimbey RCMP. “It’s costing everybody more money. It’s costing the taxpayers, insurance costs skyrocket, hospital costs – everything goes up when people drink and drive.”
He said in many cases those who are caught are repeat offenders who are forced to pay double or more for their insurance once or if they get their driver’s license back and that the courts are handing out significantly higher fines for those caught more than once.
“My experience has been that with a lot of people, once they’re picked up the first time for drinking and driving, sooner or later, somewhere down the line be it five or six years later, they get picked up again for drinking and driving,” Coulthard said.
“We’re going to be out there cruising the bars, the lounges and the sports bars; the parking lots and watching for impaired drivers,” he added. “We also have several check-stops planned – we’re trying to key one up now with Mothers Against Drinking and Driving out of Lacombe and with the sheriff’s department.”
Oh, and for those who feel they can still somehow make it through a check stop while the officers are tied up with another, less-fortunate driver, Coulthard said think again because this year they’ll have a new weapon in their arsenal.
“The sheriff’s department now has the okay to run with the RCMP, who will be on-site, and they’re going to be bringing an intoxilizer-equipped trailer to the scene. We’ll be able to set up, say, south of Highway 20 at the point on interest check stop,” he said. “We’ll pull the trailer in with a truck – it’s got a generator so you can call a lawyer and a couple of minutes later you’ll be blowing on the approved instrument inside the trailer. They’ve got a holding cell where we can hold people until such time as a sober person can come and pick them up. This thing is on wheels, it’s rolling, and it’s up and down the highways as we speak.”
The new unit is also equipped with a washroom, working areas for police and also features a cell phone hookup. More importantly, the unit will allow police to continue with a check stop providing they have the necessary manpower and according to Coulthard, that won’t be a problem.
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“With this unit we avoid the problem of setting up a check stop with, for example, only two or three members there and if the second driver we stop is impaired, we have to shut down the check stop because we have to run the driver in. So it pretty much takes us of the road and away from the check stop for a couple of hours before we can get back again,” he said. “Whereas if we have this trailer and a bunch of members out, some assistance from neighbouring Detachments and the help of the sheriffs, we can put on a large check stop with the intoxilator right there. It doesn’t pull members off the scene, the check stop carries on and we still have the suspect in the trailer providing a breath sample.”
Despite all the warnings however, Coulthard said people still go overboard, especially at this time of year where there’s a plethora of parties and visiting going on.
“I think what we wind up with more over the holidays is people going to Christmas parties and they tend to overindulge with the alcohol and then they take the chance of driving home, but they get caught,” he said.
“We’re just encouraging people to pay attention to what they’re doing at a Christmas party. If you’re going to be drinking, then have the smarts to get a designated driver or phone a friend to come and pick you up,” Coulthard added. “We know where the Christmas parties are and if we see the Legion on a Friday night for example, is packed wall to wall, we know that there’s a Christmas party going on. We know that if the Beattie House is rented and there’s people inside drinking and having a Christmas party, those are the places we’ll be watching.”
In many cases he said finding out where the parties are is as easy as reading he local newspaper which features a number of advertisements for parties and other gatherings not only prior to Christmas, but also on New Year’s Eve and that includes many halls in the country.
Coulthard said every year the RCMP picks up impaired drivers who actually have their children with them in the car as well as cases where the male driver is well over the legal limit however his wife or girlfriend has not been drinking at all, yet he still insists on driving.
He added that in Rimbey at least, the situation is different in larger centres due to the fact that there is no taxi service currently operating in the community. Nevertheless, Coulthard said that is no excuse and offered a viable alternative.
“They’ve tried the cab service several times here in Rimbey and it just doesn’t seem to fly. I think since I’ve been here there’s been five different cab companies start up but they go for a while and then shut down. I don’t know why – maybe there’s not enough business, I’m not sure what it is,” he said. “But they had the Safe Drive service at a curling bonspiel the other night. It’s the cadets that are doing it now so there’s basically no excuse for drinking and driving when coming home from Christmas parties. I’d suggest if anyone is looking at doing that to get a hold of them and see if they can help you out. But for heaven’s sake, if you’ve been drinking and your wife or girlfriend hasn’t been, let her drive.”
According to statistics provided by the RCMP, in 2007, 99 people were killed in alcohol-related collisions and another 354 suffered serious injuries on roadways patrolled by the RCMP in Alberta. Nationally, impaired driving is the leading criminal cause of death in Canada and alcohol is involved in nearly 40 percent of motor vehicle fatalities.
Further, young drivers under the age of 19 are 251 times more likely to be involved in a fatal collision with a blood alcohol concentration in excess of 150 milligrams as a percentage.
Also, statistics indicate that impaired drivers are far less likely to wear their seatbelts while drivers with a blood alcohol level in excess of 170 milligrams represent 64 percent of fatalities that occur during the night and are 461 times more likely to be involved in a fatal motor vehicle collision.
Other revealing statistics indicate males between 18 and 24 years of age were most likely to have been drinking before collisions and there were almost five times as many male drivers as female drivers who had consumed alcohol prior to the collision.
In 2007, alcohol related casualty crashes were most likely to have occurred in June or July, on Saturday between 11:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m.