Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Road Safety Week focusing on dangerous D’s

KANATA, Ont. – Canada Road Safety Week is scheduled to run May 15-21, as the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police looks to draw attention to an array of safety-related issues.

It’s a campaign asking people to take the D’s — in the form of drunk, drugged, distracted, drowsy, dangerously, or detached – out of driving.

May 16 will include a special focus on alcohol-impaired driving, while the 17th will focus on fatigue-impaired driving. Distracted driving is the focus on the 18th, followed by drug-impaired driving and aggressive driving on the 19th and 20th, respectively. Occupant restraint use rounds out the issues of the week on May 21.

May 19 is also designated as National Enforcement Day.

The campaign is designed as part of the broader Canada’s Road Safety Strategy 2025, which looks to make Canada’s roads the safest in the world.

According to Canadian Motor Vehicle Traffic Collision Statistics, there were 1,898 motor vehicle fatalities in Canada in 2016, up 2% from 2015. The 10,322 recorded serious injuries were down 4% year over year. The 5.2 fatalities per 100,000 people, and 5.1 fatalities per billion vehicle kilometers traveled, remained unchanged.

In 2015, police reported 72,039 impaired driving incidents, representing a rate of 201 incidents per 100,000 people. This is the lowest rate since data on impaired driving was first collected in 1986 (-65%), and 4% lower than 2014.

Each year in Canada, about 2,000 people are killed and 165,000 are injured while using the road transportation system, annually costing society $37 billion (2.2% of Canadian GDP).

Read the full article from TruckNews.com at: https://www.trucknews.com/transportation/road-safety-week-focusing-dangerous-ds/1003085709/

Posted at 12:38 PM