Guelph Police and Wellington County OPP kicked off the annual Festive RIDE program Tuesday.
"We're out here to make the public aware and trying to prevent any impaired driving and tragedies on our road over this holiday season," said Sgt. Ray Gordon, an officer with the Guelph Police Service traffic unit.
While police do RIDE, or Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere, checks all year round, their frequency and importance increases during the festive season, he said.
"There's more parties through the holiday season and history has told us that there's more impaired driving," said Gordon.
With ride-shares, taxis and many other options "there's no excuse" for getting behind the wheel intoxicated, he continued.
"Plan ahead when you're sober and able to make rational decisions, so that when you're impaired by alcohol or drugs you're not trying to formulate a plan at that point."
Wellington County OPP has already performed 164 RIDE checks so far in 2021, and that number is expected to rise during the Festive RIDE program.
The service performed only 104 RIDE checks in 2020, although that figure was presumably greatly impacted by the pandemic.
"Every year we're going to try to beat or do more than we did last year to stop drunk driving," said Const. Joshua Cunningham, Wellington County OPP media relations officer.
"Really until we can't find any drunk drivers because there are no drunk drivers, our task will be to find and identify those people."
