Ahead of Canada Road Safety Week, and what is traditionally one of the biggest travel days of the year, the Ontario Provincial Police is releasing statistics on road fatalities.
Since January 1, the Essex County OPP Detachment reported three fatal crashes in the region that took four lives.
Across the province, there have been 76 fatal crashes. Consistent with past years, a significant number are the result of aggressive driving, distracted driving, impaired driving, and not wearing seatbelts.
Provincial Police, and other policing services across Ontario, will focus on those four behaviours in a province-wide blitz next week.
"The number of innocent people killed every year on our roads because of dangerous, careless driving is staggering," said OPP Chief Superintendent Rohan Thompson. "As a driver, every person travelling with or around you stands to pay the price for the risks you take behind the wheel. So do their families. How you drive is not just your business, it's everyone's business."
Over the past ten years, there have been 719 fatal collisions attributed to inattentive driving. Another 679 were speed-related, 615 involved impaired driving, and 565 people died because they were not wearing seatbelts.
