Drivers in Ontario were in a hurry this August long weekend.
Ontario Provincial Police say there has been a dramatic jump in the number of speeding charges over the holiday, compared to 2016.
Province-wide, OPP officers laid 1312 speeding charges on Ontario roads, compared to 832 last year.
84 of those charges were in the Ottawa area.
It’s an increase that OPP Constable Guy Prevost calls “troubling.”
“For some reason they’ve gone up this year,” he says. “That’s a combination of factors. More officers on the road, more people caught speeding.”
Distracted driving remained flat, year-over-year, with 26 charges both years, but alcohol impairment went up slightly, with 17 charges laid this year compared to 11 last year.
Prevost says, however, there is a silver lining.
“One good thing is failing to move over for emergency vehicles charges have gone down,” he says. “This year we have 63 charges, compared to 101 from 2016.”
Prevost says, in total, 1871 charges of all kinds were laid over the August long weekend in Ontario, 135 of them in Ottawa. There were 1370 charges laid in Ontario over the August long weekend last year.