Every six hours an impaired driver kills someone in Canada.

Every 20 minutes an impaired driver injures someone.

In 1999, almost 100 people died and 3,400 people were injured in impaired driving crashes. And remember we are talking about human lives, almost 4,000 lives that have been forever touched, marked and changed. In the nine years that RRID has been in existence, 1,077 people have died, and 35,214 have been injured by impaired drivers in British Columbia. We must remember that injuries that occur in impaired driving crashes are not skinned knees and bloody noses but usually devastating life altering injuries like brain damage or paralysis. In the twenty-five years ICBC has been in existence almost 16,000 people have died in automobile crashes.

Impaired driving is one of the leading causes of death on British Columbia highways, contributing to 30% of all fatal traffic fatalities each year.

Approximately one in five victims of alcohol-related collisions is aged 16 to 20. Traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for Canadians under 24 years of age. We need to change that. Impaired driving is the leading criminal cause of death for Canadians of all ages we need to change that too.

But the responsibility to make those changes does not just fall on the traffic safety community. It is a responsibility that has to be shared by everyone in British Columbia. We all lose when a life is cut too short. Especially, when the death occurs because someone wants to move a vehicle from here to there. What a waste of human life. We need to remember that the number 16,000 is so much more than a number. It represents the deaths of 16,000 individual people, people like Chris, David, Kenny, Marg and Neil and so many others. The loss of their lives represents a loss to our community that can never be measured.

As a community we must come together to make our roads safer. We must work together to ensure that the next twenty-five years are different. Traffic safety, including impaired driving is everyone's problem. For it's true, the responsibility is ours. It belongs to each and ever citizen of British Columbia. We all must do our part.

Please support our efforts because together we can make a difference.