The latest Canadian crime numbers show that impaired driving is down. Impairment from alcohol, that is. Drug impairment while driving is on the rise.
That comes from Statistics Canada's 2016 Uniform Crime Reporting Survey. It's the yearly study that takes information from police across the country to track crime in Canada. The survey reports the number of various types of crimes committed and also gives the rate for each as the number of incidents per 100,000 population.
The data shows that police reported 1,400 fewer impaired driving incidents last year, down about 3 percent to 70,500 total. That marks five consecutive years of declines. The rate of impaired driving infractions is 194 per 100,000 population, which is just a third of what it was when data collection began in 1986.
In contrast to the overall number, driving while under the influence of drugs is up. There were 3,098 drug-impaired driving violations reported in 2016, up 343 from the year before. The data on drug-impairment has only been tracked since 2008, but the number of violations has risen steadily since tracking began.
While drug-impaired driving still makes up just 4 percent of total impaired driving incidents, the number has been trending the wrong way. Stats Canada also notes that there are "greater difficulties in measuring the level of drug impairment compared with alcohol impairment," suggesting the real number is higher.
For 2016, drug-impaired driving rates went up in Ontario (38 percent), British Columbia (29 percent) and Quebec (10 percent). They were down in Yukon, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, and Nunavut, but the exact figures weren't in the data made available.
Yukon and the Northwest Territories had by far the highest rates of DUI, at 976 and 1,490 per 100,000 population respectively. For Yukon, that's a drop of nearly 250 from 2015, but the Northwest Territories were up 280 per 100,000 population. Both suffered from impaired driving far more than the national average of 194 per 100,000. The lowest rates of impaired driving were found in Ontario, where it was just 106 incidents per 100,000. That low figure in Ontario helped lower the rest of the country's average. So much so that only Ontario and Quebec (180) were below that national figure. All other provinces were above 194, with Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Alberta, and BC all falling between 221 and 287 per 100,000
The total rates of impaired driving were down slightly in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario. PEI saw a big jump, as did Alberta and Nunavut.
So while the rates of impaired driving are falling overall, they aren't doing so in every province. People are more likely than before to be impaired from drugs as well. So walk, bus, or take a cab. Don't drive impaired, and if you suspect that someone is, the police would be happy to take your call.
