Alcohol often goes hand in hand with summer plans including graduation parties and camping — which is why police on the North Shore will be keeping an extra eye out for impaired drivers over the next couple months.
The stepped up enforcement is part of a provincewide CounterAttack campaign rolled out last week to remind people that nearly half of the on average 86 annual impaired driving fatalities happen in the summer, with approximately 23 of those accidents occurring in the Lower Mainland.
B.C. residents are most at risk to be involved in an impaired driving accident on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m., according to ICBC statistics.
At the end of the Sea-to-Sky Highway in Horseshoe Bay is where West Vancouver police have nabbed many drivers coming back from a camping trip that have “miscalculated quite badly how long it would take for their body to metabolize out the alcohol from the previous night,” according to West Vancouver police spokesman Const. Jeff Palmer.
“Camping puts people on different clocks for when they are celebrating, but they definitely have to be aware they’ve got to put long periods of time between any alcohol and drug consumption (and driving),” said Palmer.
The Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal is another active area for impaired drivers who are heading to or returning from a holiday. Fellow passengers or ferry staff will spot someone who appears intoxicated either in a vehicle or heading to a vehicle and call police who can head them off at the pass as they exit the ferry.
Six files involving ferry drivers or passengers impaired by drugs or alcohol while waiting in the loading lanes were handled by WVPD this year, resulting in three 24-hour driving prohibitions and one 90-day immediate roadside prohibition.
As recently as Sunday, police issued a 24-hour driving ban after nabbing a driver who appeared to be high on methamphetamine, as they exited the ferry ramp at Horseshoe Bay.
There have been at least three other cases of impaired driving in West Vancouver since summer started. On June 30, two drivers on the Lions Gate Bridge failed a Breathalyzer test at a WVPD roadblock and were respectively handed 90-day and three-day immediate roadside prohibitions.
On the year as a whole, 127 impaired drivers have been caught by West Vancouver police, compared to 146 drivers in the same time period last year. Still, it’s the summer months that are particularly concerning for police, because that’s when youth are out celebrating in large numbers.
Sobering ICBC stats reveal 16 to 25 year old drivers account for 31 per cent of impaired driving crashes, while they only make up 13 per cent of all drivers in B.C.
Meanwhile, males account for an astounding 71 per cent of all impaired drivers in vehicle crashes.
