An officer with the Grenville County OPP detachment says she doesn’t want people to post the location of RIDE program checkpoints on social media.
“It’s generally because it pushes people to other, maybe smaller roads,” says Community Safety Officer Annie Collins, “that are more heavily built up with other houses. They’re kind of just redirecting people to, potentially, their own areas if they tell them where we all are.” She says the main goal of the program is to get people who have been drinking off the roads, and broadcasting checkpoint locations will just redirect impaired drivers.
Aside from people posting the locations on social media, Collins says this year’s program has been successful. “It’s been going very well,” she says. “We’ve been out regularly, all weekends and the prime-time hours.”
“In the six hours I was out,” Collins says, “we had three three-day [suspensions], and about seven tests done. So, it’s sadly still a requirement that we need to do, because people are still not following the rules.” The Festive RIDE campaign ends on January 2nd.