Spot checks are a common sight in the days leading up to Christmas.
Now that the holidays are over, the Cape Breton chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) has an encouraging statistic to share from the roadside stops it took part in during the 2022 festive season.
"Over the holidays, with MADD's involvement, we didn't find any impaired-related charges that were laid," said Rob Matheson, the president of the Cape Breton MADD chapter.
While Cape Breton Regional Police and RCMP did lay some charges away from the spot checks on Cape Breton roads over Christmas, Matheson said the fact the areas numbers were relatively low has to be taken as a positive sign.
"There's still lots of work to do. We're not there," he said. “It's still not 100 per cent eradicated, but the fact that the numbers are consistently going down year over year is encouraging that the public is getting the message."
Throughout Cape Breton, where more than 5,000 vehicles were stopped during the spot checks put on by MADD and police over the holidays.
Matheson says awareness, and perhaps a greater availability of taxis in recent years, contributed to the clean sheet.
"We had been promoting that message for about a month leading into the holiday season with our Project Red Ribbon campaign, so the fact that we didn't find any was encouraging," he said.
Cape Breton Regional Police says they charged three people on the roads and highways for impaired driving-related offences, between Dec. 21, 2022 and Jan. 2.
In New Brunswick, the Fredericton Police Force reported the city's highest rate of impaired driving-related offences in four years.
"Scared. Honestly, scared. I have children that are out on these roads driving and it's scary," said Angela Lamey, the president of the MADD Greater Fredericton chapter.
It's a similar story in Saint John, N.B., where police tweeted Jan. 5 that 11 impaired driving arrests were made over the holidays as part of the Festive RIDE campaign.
"Somebody has made a bad choice and that devastatingly changes families forever," Lamey said.
