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Ottawa police are taking a new approach to their annual RIDE campaign this holiday season – telling drivers in advance where the sobriety checkpoints will be.
Starting Thursday, police will post on social media the general stop location where the driver stopped for a traffic violation that evening.
“Every night we will let everyone know where we are,” said Sgt. Amy Gagnon.
For example, on Thursday, police will set up a RIDE (Reduce All-Round Driving for People with Disabilities) checkpoint in the Riverside/Vanier area.
Gagnon said the idea is to help motorists make “informed decisions” before they get behind the wheel.
“I'd rather not arrest someone – I'd rather stop them from driving under the influence, and so our goal is really to keep our roads safe and secure. [try] a different approach,” she told CBC.
“If someone actually gets arrested for drunk driving, what's your excuse? You knew we were going to be there.”
OPP will not share location
This strategy may seem counterintuitive to some: If drunk or drunk drivers know where the RIDE checkpoints are, wouldn't they just avoid them?
“Our position continues to be that we will not necessarily inform anyone about this in advance,” Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) spokesman Bill Dixon said.
Dixon stopped short of criticizing the Ottawa Police Service's approach, but said the OPP would not follow their lead.
If we tell them exactly where we're going to be, maybe they can find a way around it.– Bill Dixon, 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 can be anywhere,” he said.
“At the end of the day, the goal is to keep impaired drivers off the roadway, and no matter how you do it, that's the bottom line.”
Both Dixon and Gagnon noted that popular wayfinding apps, including Google Maps and Waze, already alert motorists when police are nearby, so disclosing the general location of a RIDE checkpoint may not have much effect.
“Wherever the police are stationed, the message will spread quickly on social media where sobriety tests are conducted,” he said. Steve Sullivan, CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), Canada.
“So whether the police notify the public where they're going to be or people just tell others anyway, I think word gets out pretty quickly.”
Sullivan said highly visible and well-publicized RIDE campaigns are already an effective deterrent tool, whether police reveal their location or not.
“It will be interesting to see what the results of this are and I think it will inform other police services as they move forward,” he said.
Hundreds of people have been charged this year.
Ottawa police have already laid 733 drink-driving charges this year, up slightly from 2024. Nearly half of those resulted from 911 calls, police said.
Of the 166 drunk driving-related crashes in Ottawa this year, five were fatal or resulted in life-threatening injuries, according to police.
During the same period, OPP laid more than 1,900 impaired driving charges in eastern Ontario and reported 11 related fatal crashes.
Since 2018, police in Canada can require roadside breath tests at traffic stops and checkpoints without even suspecting the driver is intoxicated.
