As the holidays approach, police officers from the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) set up a roadblock at the entrance to the Jacques Cartier Bridge located on the island of Montreal, Friday evening, to counter the consumption of alcohol and drugs while driving.
The initiative was part of the Opération nationale concertée, led by the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) and carried out in collaboration with municipal police forces, which runs from November 26 to January 3.
” Last year, [en raison de] the pandemic, we had no gatherings allowed. We want to remind drivers to be vigilant this year, ”says Catherine Bernard, spokesperson for the SQ.
Since the start of the operation, 39 roadblocks have been set up on the island of Montreal, specifies Nathalie Valois, road safety advisor at the SPVM. In total, police spoke with 5,150 drivers, 76 of whom were tested. Among them, three people were arrested for impaired driving.
PHOTO SARAH MONGEAU-BIRKETT, THE PRESS
For meme Valois, roadside checks are above all a visibility and awareness-raising operation. “The goal is to remind people that we can be there [sur la route] “, she says.
She recalls that the officers are also attentive to the consumption of drugs by the drivers. “The most detected drugs that our drivers in Quebec consume are cocaine, methamphetamine and depressants,” explains Mme Valois.
The police still do not have devices on the road that would allow them to detect the presence of drugs in the body. However, they do require drivers to complete a movement coordination test (ECM).
At the passage of Press, the police arrested a driver, who got out of his black truck. Once on the road, officers spoke with him, before asking him to blow into an alcohol detection device. The police let the man back on the road afterwards, the test result being visibly negative.
Nathalie Valois explains that since 2018, the police do not need to have the suspicion that a person has consumed alcohol or drugs to ask him to take a test. Thus, officers sometimes randomly test drivers for prevention.
Driving under the influence of alcohol is one of the main causes of death on the roads of Quebec. The National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ) reports that among “the 139 drivers who died in 2019 who underwent a blood alcohol test, 30.3% had a blood alcohol level above the legal limit”, can we read on the organization website.