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Ottawa police are taking a new approach to their annual holiday season RIDE campaign — they’re letting drivers know in advance where the sobriety checkpoints will be.
Starting Thursday, police will post on social media the general location of that evening’s impaired driving stop.
“We’re going to let everyone know where we are every night,” said Sgt. Amy Gagnon.
On Thursday, for example, police will set up their RIDE (Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere) checkpoint in the Riverside/Vanier area.
Gagnon said the idea is to help motorists make an “informed decision” before they get behind the wheel.
“I’d rather not have to arrest someone — I’d rather prevent them from driving impaired, and so our goal is really to keep our roads safe and [try] a different approach,” she told CBC.
“If someone is actually arrested driving impaired, what’s your excuse? You knew we were going to be there.”
OPP won’t share locations
To some, the strategy might seem counterintuitive: If drunk or high drivers know where the RIDE checkpoints are, won’t they simply avoid them?
“Our view is still, we are going to not necessarily tell anyone in advance,” said Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) spokesperson Bill Dickson.
While Dickson steered clear of criticizing the Ottawa Police Service’s approach, he said OPP will not be following their lead.
If we tell them exactly where we’re going to be, they might manage to find a way around it.– Bill Dickson, Ontario Provincial Police
“If we tell them exactly where we’re going to be, they might manage to find a way around it, so we want to let people know that we could be anywhere,” he said.
“At the end of the day, the goal is to keep and get impaired drivers off the roadway, and no matter how you do it, that’s the bottom line.”
Both Dickson and Gagnon pointed out that popular way-finding apps including Google Maps and Waze already warn motorists when police are nearby, so sharing the general location of a RIDE checkpoint might not have much impact.
“Wherever police set up, it doesn’t take long for the message to get out on social media where the sobriety checks are,” said Steve Sullivan, CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Canada
“So whether it’s the police notifying the public where they’re going to be, or people just letting others know anyway, I think the word gets out pretty quickly.”
Sullivan said highly visible, widely publicized RIDE campaigns are already an effective deterrence tools, whether police disclose the locations or not.
“It will be interesting to see what the results of this are, and I think it will be informative for other police services as they move forward,” he said.
Hundreds charged this year
Ottawa police have already laid 733 impaired driving-related charges this year, a slight increase from 2024. Nearly half of those resulted from calls to 911, police said.
Of the 166 impaired driving-related collisions in Ottawa this year, five were fatal or resulted in life-threatening injuries, police said.
During the same period, OPP have laid more than 1,900 impaired driving charges in eastern Ontario and are reporting 11 related fatal collisions there.
Since 2018, police in Canada have been able to demand a roadside breath sample at traffic stops and checkpoints, even without suspecting that a driver has been drinking.
