Vol. 80, No. 3Cover stories

Male and female police officer stand on road beside car

Back-road presence

Manitoba police patrol rural gravel roads

The RCMP partnered with Manitoba Public Insurance last year for an awareness and enforcement campaign on the province's rural gravel roads. The campaign will continue this summer. Credit: Manitoba Traffic Services, RCMP

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As she drives down the back roads of rural Manitoba, Cst. Luanne Gibb takes note of the number of beer cans and bottles scattered along the side of the road.

"That's generally how I decide where to go," says Gibb, an officer from the Westman RCMP Traffic Services Unit. "I follow the cans."

On Friday and Saturday nights, Gibb often sits in the dark on a road where she's noticed a particularly high volume of beer cans. She'll wait for a vehicle to come by, flick on her police lights and check to make sure the driver is sober and no one is breaking the law.

"The rural communities and gravel roads are not immune to fatalities or accidents caused by impaired driving," says Gibb. "My neighbour's son was killed. It hits close to home."

In Manitoba, an average of 14 people are killed, and nearly 500 injured, in crashes on gravel roads each year, according to data from Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI).

That's why Manitoba RCMP partnered with MPI last year for an awareness and enforcement campaign, targeting drivers on Manitoba's rural gravel roads.

"We were shocked with the results, we thought we'd barely see any drivers and here we were writing a ton of tickets and catching a ton of impaired drivers," says Sgt. Mark Hume, the unit commander. "People are very unaccustomed to seeing cops on the back roads. We're slowly changing that."

Hidden expressways

Traffic Services units normally concentrate their police presence on highways and major roads where the greatest volume of traffic is found.

When MPI first proposed the campaign targeting the back gravel roads, Hume was skeptical his team would find anything. The team's strategic analyst, Janette Rodewald, felt the same way.

"We were worried officers would just be driving around and wouldn't find anything," says Rodewald, who works for the RCMP's Traffic Services in Manitoba."Because of the low traffic volume, we thought it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack."

To their surprise, the back-road patrols turned up a shocking number of drivers who were violating basic traffic laws.

Over the course of the four-month campaign, RCMP officers caught 31 impaired drivers, found 52 unregistered vehicles, and laid more than 1,000 charges for speeding, open alcohol, failing to stop at intersections, and failure to use seatbelts, among other offences.

"We've identified the major routes between many of these small towns — we call them expressways at night," says Hume. "It turns out many people take these routes from one town to another to avoid police."

Why are you out here?

In one roadside stop, Gibb says she pulled over a driver who was visibly surprised to see her. "He told me, 'I come this way because police are never on these roads, why are you out here?'" says Gibb.

As it turned out, the man was well over the legal limit for alcohol, and Gibb charged him with impaired driving.

While some drivers are annoyed by the heightened police presence on the rural roads, Gibb and Hume say most are extremely grateful.

"It brings residents a sense of security to know we're out there," says Hume. "And it's more than road safety. Our police presence also helps deter rural crime."

Since the campaign, Manitoba RCMP Traffic Services units have made back-road patrols a regular part of police shifts. Gibb says she's noticed people in the community talking about police being out on the gravel roads and rural areas, and they're changing their behaviour as a result.

"I've noticed more taxis, more parents and friends in pajamas travelling to pick somebody up, and people drinking less so they're not over the limit. I've also noticed a significant decrease in beer cans," says Gibb with a laugh. "We want you to have a good time, but at the end of the day, we want you to get home safely."

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