Last month SGI focused its traffic safety spotlight on impaired driving with a particular focus on cannabis-impaired driving.
A spokesperson with SGI, Tyler McMurchy provides some insight into the results from last month's spotlight.
"We have the results back from the traffic safety spotlight. Now, these results are not substance-specific, they refer to both drug and alcohol impairment. The number of impaired drivers reported by police for the month of May for the province of Saskatchewan was 328 drivers that were caught after drinking or consuming drugs."
McMurchy adds that although that number is higher than they would like it isn't higher than expected as last year in May of 2021, 507 impaired driving offenses were reported. He says that impaired driving remains a significant concern no matter what the monthly numbers tell us because it's still the number one killer of people on Saskatchewan roads.
In addition, McMurchy provides some insight into the other spotlight results.
"We did see 6112 drivers ticketed for speeding or driving aggressively. Now as the weather warms up we do see those speeding numbers start to increase as well and so we would like to remind people, of course, you want to avoid those hefty speeding tickets."
As McMurchy points out, there is an additional benefit of an increase in safety when driving the speed limit. He adds that you can see better things that may be approaching as well as have more time to react to something unexpected.
Other results from the May spotlight included 406 tickets issued for not wearing a seatbelt, wearing it incorrectly, or having children improperly restrained and 748 distracted drivers, including 655 drivers using a mobile device.
This month's spotlight is a dual focus on seatbelts as they relate to impaired driving. McMurchy says that impaired driving is the leading factor in auto crash fatalities and in many of those tragedies it is not the only factor. More than one-third of impaired driving deaths in the province also involve not wearing a seatbelt.
McMurchy points out that coming up next month will be the 45th birthday of the seatbelt law in Saskatchewan.