North District RCMP Chief Superintendent Rod Booth checks a driver’s license, while  Constable Gary Peebles stands by – photo 250News

Prince George, B.C.- Today,  RCMP across the country are  taking part in  the National  Impaired Driving  Enforcement campaign.

North District  Staff Sergeant Pat McTiernan  says  while  there are usually more people  driving while impaired during the summer,  ’tis the season for partying  “The propensity to  go out and consume alcohol is there, so we’re looking to reduce  the incidents of impaired driving  by encouraging  people to use  services like Keys Please, Operation Red Nose, a designated driver,  transit or taxi service to get home safely.”

(at right,  a road side check on 5th Avenue on Friday  afternoon – 250News)

The standard roadside checks can be expected, but McTiernan says the “rolling” road side checks will also be  used this season.  “The rolling road block   is our response to social media, as we had found people were texting or tweeting their friends to advise where the standard  roadside checks were located.”   He says in a rolling, or  mobile road check, four or five  police cars moving together, will move on to a street, pull over the first five cars deal with  those five cars, and then all five police cars will pull out together  and go on to the next  street and pull over the next five cars.

Staff Sergeant McTiernan says  on average there  are about 22 deaths in North District attributed to impaired driving each year, “We’ve seen that come down to about 12 this year,  so we’re looking  at, in some cases, a 50% decrease in the  impaired driving incidents.”

And it isn’t just alcohol  that  officers will be looking for “We have officers  who are called drug  recognition  experts and those officers are also trained for looking for  people who are under the influence of drugs.”

Surprisingly ,  impaired drivers  don’t just  show up  late at night says McTiernan “We also get impaired drivers at 9 and 10 in the morning,  some of those  can be attributed  to drivers who were out drinking the night before.  What a lot of motorists don’t realize is the residual effect of alcohol from the party  the night before.  They still have alcohol in their system.  And then there are those that are going for  lunch with their  boss or their friends, and they are drinking at luncheon Christmas parties and  we’re finding them on  the road  during the day.  So these road checks  can happen anytime  day  or night, and surprisingly enough we are getting impaired drivers throughout the day.”