Halton Regional Police say there was a seven per cent increase in the number of impaired-driving charges laid in the region last year compared to 2017.
Almost 600 motorists were charged.
It comes after officers conducted just over 3,100 roadside tests in 2018 — a 20 per cent increase over the year before.
Forty-two motorists were also charged with drug-impaired driving offences and Halton police believe those numbers will be higher this year.
In a release, Sgt. Ryan Snow of the Traffic Services Unit, says they’ve been working “to dispel the myth that drug-impaired driving is easy to mask and therefore difficult to detect.”
“Impairment by drugs affects information-processing, hand-eye co-ordination, judgment, concentration, comprehension, visual acuity and reaction time. Our highly-trained officers continue to enforce drug-impaired driving based on observations of the readily recognizable effects of drugs on a driver’s ability to operate a motor vehicle,” said Snow.
Snow says other drivers are also a major contributor to the enforcement of alcohol- and drug-impaired driving, giving credit for the 169 drivers who were arrested and charged last year.
He said, “With a third of our impaired investigations being attributable, at least in part to our community, this is exactly what we mean when we say that road safety is a shared responsibility.”
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