If you drink these holidays, don’t drive: Burnaby RCMP

Amid several serious crashes in Burnaby in the past month, including one that killed two people, Mounties are pleading with the public to use their common sense.

The message is simple — if you’re going to drink alcohol over the holidays, don’t get behind the wheel.

Cpl. Mike Kalanj explains that while police don’t suspect impaired driving in the latest crash along Boundary Road on Friday, investigators are still trying to understand what happened.

“There are a lot of things that they are looking into. That’s one of them, driver error is another potential [factor], speeding, for that time in the morning. It was 4:50 in the morning when it occurred,” Kalanj told 1130 NewsRadio on Monday.

According to police, during just two nights of impaired driving roadblocks in Burnaby on Dec. 12 and 13, a total of eight drivers were taken off the road for being under the influence.

“You know, in general, we’re just finding we’re having too many big collisions lately,” he explained. “We’ve had a double fatality that occurred on Friday night, and we’ve had some pedestrians struck lately. And most concerningly, we’ve been taking a lot of impaired drivers off the road the last little bit.”

According to data from ICBC, on average, 61 people are killed and 1,404 people are injured in impaired driving-related crashes in the province each year.

One of the crashes in Burnaby this month also injured an RCMP officer. Kalanj explains that the Mountie is now at home recovering from his injuries.

“They were definitely non-life threatening [injuries]. Not sure when he’ll be returning to work, but our thoughts are obviously with him and his family,” Kalanj said.

“Maybe, eventually, we’ll be able to release some dash cam footage on that.

That particular crash happened on Nov. 27, when the Burnaby RCMP officer was pulled over on Highway 1 between the Gaglardi Way and Kensington Avenue exits investigating a hit and run.

According to police, the officer was pulled over in his cruiser and had his lights activated when his police car was rear ended by a pickup truck, which appeared to make no effort to slow down.

With files from Mackezine Fleet.