Canada Road Safety Week kicked off Monday and focuses on distracted, aggressive and impaired drivers and people who aren’t buckling up.
OPP Const. Laurie Houghton says “We’re calling on our officers and we’re using every available officer and piece of equipment to educate the public.”
And with the long weekend coming up, provincial and local police will be out in force trying to keep the roads safe.
“The last thing that I want to have to do as an officer is to knock on somebody’s doorway to let them know that, not only is their loved one no longer with us, but it’s all because they felt the need to text ‘LOL’ on their cellphone as opposed to paying attention to the roadway,” Houghton says.
On Monday, the first day of the safety campaign, London police officers issued 90 tickets.
Officers charged 35 people for not wearing their seatbelts, 12 people for driving while distracted and 32 people for aggressive driving related offences.
Over 250 vehicles were stopped to check for driver sobriety and two women were separately arrested and charged for impaired driving-related offences.
According to Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation, during the Victoria Day long weekend in 2010 there were seven deaths, 300 injuries and 1,300 collisions.
Police are hoping to bring those numbers down with the safety blitz, which is strategically timed for the first long weekend in warmer weather.
Canada Road Safety Week runs until Monday, May 20.
