The Surete du Quebec is reminding drivers to slow down heading into the long weekend.
Officers will be monitoring highways cracking down on speeding and other infractions.
“We will catch you if you drive fast,” said SQ Cpt. Paul Leduc.
In a 90-minute operation Thursday, 16 tickets were handed out; the most expensive was $376 and the loss of five demerit points to a driver doing 150 kilometres an hour on the Laurentian Highway.
“It's like the start of the summer. Everybody gets out on the road, they go camping, they go to all the different activities that are out there so that means a very big increase in people travelling,” said Leduc, adding that it always means an increase in collisions.
Overall, traffic deaths are down in the province, but in each of the last two years, 14 people have died and another 600 were injured on Quebec roads over the St-Jean Baptiste and Canada Day weekends.
“For us that's unacceptable. We need to bring this down,” said Leduc.
The majority of the accidents and deaths come from speeding, driving and texting, and people not wearing seatbelts.
The SQ will be patrolling highways, waterways and using airplanes to help keep tabs on bad drivers.
“Just yesterday we used the plane for the people that cut the line. You know, there's a long line of traffic, there's somebody that comes in and tries to cut the line. First of all, that's very frustrating for the other driver but it creates road rage and it creates crashes,” explained Leduc.
More than 100 tickets were handed out for that operation, he said.
The SQ is again reminding people that fines in construction zones are doubled.
