Messy weather, holiday traffic and Christmas partiers behind the wheel add up to extra seasonal headaches for Ottawa police.
Extra RIDE checkpoints have been operating all month, at different times of day than during the rest of the year.
“There’ll be some in the afternoon, there’ll be some in the late evening, instead of just the standard bar crowd after-hours type of thing,” said Const. Craig Roberts of the traffic escort and enforcement squad. “We’ll be trying to address some of the Christmas cheer afternoon holiday drinking.”
Alcohol was a factor in nine Ottawa deaths in 2009. The other big danger, excessive speed, resulted in another 15 fatalities.
“We always try to remind people about adjusting speed for the conditions and increasing following distance which is often difficult for people to remember, especially in rush hour conditions,” Roberts said.
Co-operative driving, he added, can mitigate the horrors of holiday traffic.
