Introduced more than three decades ago, the winter CounterAttack Impaired Driving Campaign gets back in full swing as the holiday season nears.
The CounterAttack program involves increased road checks to strengthen public awareness on road safety and to remove impaired drivers from our roadways.
“We will be doing our seasonal road checks and they will be very random in nature and may pop up just about anywhere in the community,” stated Grand Forks RCMP Staff Sgt. Jim Harrison. “That’s sort of an on-going business but we will be doing more of them during the seasonal period.”
Harrison pointed out that the Grand Forks Department of Transportation highway patrol unit will also be stepping up their enforcement in Grand Forks as well.
“Normally during the Christmas season we do tend to do more random road check stop programs, where we actually set up on the road and we pull people over and have a chat with them,” he said.
Since Sept. 10, 2010, British Columbia’s drinking and driving laws are now tougher with new penalties under the Motor Vehicle Act.
Police are able to issue an immediate roadside prohibition for those caught under the influence with a blood alcohol content of .05 or higher.
On the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) website, it states the vehicle of the person driving can also be impounded for three to 30 days and the driver fined $600 to $4,060, even if it is a first offense.
“Normally it’s about a five second intervention where we quickly determine if there is a strong smell of liquor on their breaths or not,” Harrison explained. “If there is, we’ll deal with it. If there’s not, then most of the time they’re allowed to proceed right away.”
Harrison believes drivers are more conscientious, especially at this time of the year.
“For the most part, we found that people have become more sensitive to the issue of drinking and driving and we’ve seen vast improvements over the years in the numbers of people that are actually drinking and driving,” he said.
The staff sergeant credits the campaigns to lowering drinking and driving statistics.
“The campaigns, advertising and community efforts going towards having people safe this time of year have all paid off over the years,” Harrison concluded.
According to the RCMP B.C. website, on average, there are approximately 5,600 impaired-related crashes each year, resulting in 133 lives lost and 3,400 injured.
In conjunction with RCMP, B.C. Liquor Stores and ICBC will have signs and posters placed in their facilities to remind people not to drink or drive.