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Ottawa police are taking a new approach to their annual RIDE campaign during the holiday season: They’re letting drivers know in advance where the sobriety checkpoints will be.
Starting Thursday, police will post on social media the general location of the drunk driving stop that night.
“We’re going to let everyone know where we are every night,” said Sgt. Amy Gagnon.
On Thursday, for example, police will set up their RIDE (Reduce Driving Under Driving Conditions Everywhere) checkpoint in the Riverside/Vanier area.
Gagnon said the idea is to help motorists make an “informed decision” before getting behind the wheel.
“I’d rather not have to arrest anyone; I’d rather keep them from driving under the influence, so our goal is really to keep our roads safe and [try] a different approach,” he told CBC.
“If someone really gets arrested for driving under the influence, what’s their excuse? I knew we were going to be there.”
OPP will not share locations
To some, the strategy might seem counterintuitive: If drunk or drugged drivers know where the RIDE checkpoints are, won’t they simply avoid them?
“Our view remains that we won’t necessarily tell anyone in advance,” said Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) spokesperson Bill Dickson.
While Dickson avoided criticizing the Ottawa Police Service’s approach, he said the OPP will not follow suit.
If we tell them exactly where we’re going to be, they might be able to find a way around it.– Bill Dickson, Ontario Provincial Police
“If we tell them exactly where we’re going to be, they might be able to find a way around it, so we want people to know we could be anywhere,” he said.
“At the end of the day, the goal is to keep and get drunk drivers off the road, and no matter how it’s done, that’s the bottom line.”
Both Dickson and Gagnon noted that popular wayfinding apps, including Google Maps and Waze, already warn drivers when police are nearby, so sharing the general location of a RIDE checkpoint might not have much impact.
“Wherever police are set up, it doesn’t take long for the message to spread on social media where sobriety checkpoints are conducted,” he said. Steve Sullivan, Executive Director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Canada
“So whether the police notify the public where they’re going to be, or people just inform others anyway, I think word spreads pretty quickly.”
Sullivan said highly visible and widely publicized RIDE campaigns are already effective deterrence tools, whether police reveal the locations or not.
“It will be interesting to see what the results of this are and I think it will be informative for other police services as they move forward,” he said.
Hundreds charged this year
Ottawa police have already laid 733 drunk driving-related charges this year, a slight increase from 2024. Almost half of them were for 911 calls, police said.
Of the 166 drunk-driving-related collisions in Ottawa this year, five were fatal or resulted in life-threatening injuries, police said.
During the same period, the OPP has laid more than 1,900 drunk driving charges in eastern Ontario and reported 11 related fatal collisions there.
Since 2018, police in Canada can require a roadside breath sample at traffic stops and checkpoints, even without suspecting that a driver has been drinking.
