Drinking and driving numbers appear to be down during the September long weekend but it’s still far too high as far as the Alberta RCMP are concerned.

They’re still compiling data but according to their figures, they have charged 49 people so far with impaired operation of a motor vehicle.

Corporal Laurel Scott says that number may grow, they still have some numbers coming in but so far that’s down from the 81 charges this time last year.

“The RCMP would like to see nobody on the road impaired, whether it’s a long weekend or any day, even one impaired driver is too many,” said Corporal Laurel Scott. “Traffic volumes go up on the long weekend, lots of families are out on the road and with traffic volumes being increased so do the chances of a collision. So if you have impaired drivers and compound that with an increased traffic volume, it’s just a nasty situation all around.”

They’ll be out in full force the next few weekends as well, in hopes of getting that figure down ahead of the Thanksgiving weekend.

“By educating the people about the concerns we have …. we hope that would cause the numbers to go down. If not having members out from our detachments, maybe that will act as a deterrent.”

Scott adds members of the Integrated Traffic Unit were also kept busy with some lead-foots around the province.

They laid more than 1,700 hundred speeding charges in a three day time frame, 39 of them were for people travelling more than 50 kilometres over the posted speed limit.