Canada’s Strategy to Reduce Impaired Driving: Experience to Date and Future Aspirations

In Canada, over the past 20 years, significant progress has been made in reducing the number and severity of road crashes in Canada despite an increase in the number of drivers, vehicles and estimates of kilometres driven on Canadian roads. While this progress is significant and laudable, the number of people killed or injured on roads in Canada is still unacceptably high. The leading contributor to deaths on our roads is impaired driving. Each year, alcohol-related crashes contribute to as much as 40 % of traffic deaths. Thus, a key area of concern in addressing traffic collision casualties is the management of the issue of impaired driving and its consequences. This paper gives an overview of past, current and future work that is being done at the provincial and national levels to help address the problem of drinking and driving. We conclude that over the 11 years since its inception, Canada’s Strategy To Reduce Impaired Driving (STRID) has facilitated the development of key pieces of anti-drinking and driving infrastructure in the different Canadian jurisdictions. Recent enhancements to this strategy are aimed at capitalizing on the components of this infrastructure to reduce the magnitude of drinking and driving and its adverse consequences in Canada