Weyburn Police busy with road checks

With it being right in the middle of concert and festival season, there is sure to be a large influx in the number of intoxicated drivers on our roads. According to the numbers though, this summer hasn't been overly dangerous on southeast Saskatchewan's roads.

"There was a small decrease in the number of impaired drivers and collisions province wide," said Inspector Rod Stafford, with the Weyburn Police Service. "Whatever the reason, it's fantastic to see any kind of a decrease in those numbers."

This could be due to many possible reasons. The numbers are still not low enough though.

"The difficult thing that I think everybody has had to grapple with is just why the message isn't resonating and making people more aware of their actions, especially with regards to drinking and driving," expressed Stafford. "Why have we not seen a significant decrease in the number of charges and alcohol related crashes? The message is out there, it's just not being heard."

The Weyburn Police Service is doing the best they can to reduce the number of impaired drivers behind the wheel.
"By and large we are finding nothing, which is fantastic," said Stafford. "But we are picking up still the occasional impaired driver. One is too many and two is twice too many. So we are still picking up people on a weekly basis, which is unfortunate."

This is why they have been doing a number of road checks and have been randomly pulling over vehicles.

"Routine traffic enforcement happens everyday," added Stafford. "So on any given day you can have any number of traffic tickets written for any number of reasons. But of course, all the time concentrating on any violation that we see when were out there."

Saskatchewan still has the highest rate of impaired driving of all Canadian provinces. Saskatchewan’s average of 575 drunk driving charges per 100,000 population is nearly triple the national rate, and over five times the rate in Ontario. There were harsher punishments put into place at the beginning of the year, so hopefully we will see that number go down in the near future.