Traffic safety coalition holds seminar in North Bay on impaired driving and its effects

Ending impaired driving in northern Ontario A number of groups met Monday in North Bay with an ambitious shared goal: finding ways to end impaired driving.

A seminar took place Monday in North Bay with law enforcement agencies, traffic experts and other community partners looking to try and end impaired driving.

The Traffic Injury Research Foundation created the Impaired Driving Coalition of Canada with a priority of developing a national action plan to find ways to end driving under the influence.

The North Bay session was the first regional workshop representing Ontario. Representatives from Timmins, Temiskaming Shores, Sudbury Sault Ste. Marie and North Bay were in attendance, all looking at ways to identify how their community can get the help and resources.

"Everybody tends to think about impaired driving at Christmas, but impaired driving is a year-round problem," said Robyn Robertson, president and CEO of the Traffic Injury Research Foundation.

"We see a majority of fatal collisions happen in the summer and fall months."

Choosing to get behind the wheel while impaired is a decision that kills 400 Canadians each year. It’s a topic municipal and provincial law enforcement agencies, community members, health care workers and traffic experts want to tackle.

"We're taking the work down to a community level and empowering communities to undertake prevention and awareness," Robertson said.

The roundtable was held behind closed doors as experts want to learn more about the nature of impaired driving and how it’s affecting them.

Unique challenges in the north

"We need to collaborate on innovate approaches to end impaired driving," Ontario Provincial Police Insp. Dave Walach told reporters.

One challenge is that northern rural towns don’t always have alternative ways for drivers to get home, when compared to larger cities in southern Ontario.

"The solutions that we talk about just aren't feasible," Robertson said.

"Taking a bus at midnight -- there is no bus to take, (or) getting an Uber or a rideshare, taking a taxi."

Statistics for northern Ontario show that one in four fatal crashes involve impaired driving. OPP that that as of Sept. 30, officers in the northeast region have laid close to 1,000 charges for drunk driving and for driving high.

That’s up by 18 per cent when compared to the same time frame in 2023. In total last year, more than 1,100 charges were laid.

Year to date as of early October, North Bay police data shows 28 people have been arrested for impaired by alcohol, compared to 53 in 2023, and 26 impaired by drugs so far in 2024, compared to 23 in all of last year.

"We’re always looking for that common approach," Walach said.

"It’s a shared responsibility when it comes to impaired driving or safety for our highways."

There’s been a lot of breakthroughs though, Robertson said, whether that’s updated training for officers, mandatory roadside screening laws or new technology to help officers with testing.

"While there’s always progress being made, it's the persistence of the problem," she said.

After the conference, the hope is the communities participating will voice their concerns with provincial legislators to develop road safety strategies to get closer to eradicating impaired driving.