

Chris Fox, CP24.com





York Regional Police are again raising concerns about the number of impaired drivers on the roads following a second consecutive night in which numerous charges were laid as a result of a RIDE check.

Police Chief Eric Jolliffe spoke out on Friday after an overnight RIDE check resulted in the arrest of five impaired drivers. In a statement, he called the stubbornly high number of impaired driving arrests “frustrating” and said that it “can no longer be tolerated,” noting that “innocent lives are being put at risk.”

The warning, however, did not dissuade a number of people from getting behind the wheel while impaired on Friday night.

York Regional Police tell CP24 that a total of eight people were charged with impaired driving overnight and that four other people were issued three-day suspensions due to having blood alcohol levels in the warning range.

“Despite the message and all the warnings and education we put out there nobody seems to be listening. You can hear the frustration from our chief – he resonated that yesterday – and that was when we had five people arrested and charged. Last night we arrested and charged eight drivers,” Const. Andy Pattenden lamented during an interview with CP24 on Saturday morning. “I don’t know what it is going to take to get this message out there, we keep pounding it out there but people are just not getting it.”

As of Thursday, there had been a total of 1,210 impaired driving charges issued in York Region so far in 2018, which was up from 1,172 through the same point last year.

There have also been five fatal collisions that have taken place in York Region so far in 2018 in which alcohol or drugs were a contributing factor.

“Something has to change. We have seen tragedy on York region roads. I don’t think there is anyone that hasn’t heard of the tragedy involving the Neville-Lake family back in September, 2015 and you would think seeing the lives lost would change people’s minds but it hasn’t. The numbers have gone up year after year since that tragedy,” Pattenden told CP24.