A Few for the Road
Despite the well-known dangers associated with impaired driving, why are so many people in rural Manitoba still taking the risk?
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Twenty-three days after Averee Williams-Hurdell turned 18, she got her first impaired driving charge. Williams-Hurdell grew up near Riverton, Manitoba, where she says there wasn’t much else to do as a teenager in the small town about 110 kilometres north of Winnipeg.
“Drinking was cool, right?” she says.
She remembers drinking an entire bottle of Silent Sam Vodka before getting into her aunt’s car and driving to get more cups.
“It was a rush,” she says. “I knew I shouldn’t be doing it, but I did it anyway.”
While the store was only five minutes away from her friend’s house, she ended up in a steep ditch, mangling the front of the car.
“I’m surprised I didn’t flip the car,” she says.
By the time she got out and walked back to her friend’s house, the cops were already on their way. She admitted her guilt and went to the drunk tank. The police gave her three breathalyzer tests at the station.
“Each time I was three times over the legal limit.”
With her aunt’s car impounded, she had to pay some fees. In total it cost her almost $2,500. She asked her mom for help gathering the money, which strained their relationship. She felt ashamed.
She ultimately wound up in jail for impaired driving and hopes to see a change in the way people in rural Manitoba view drinking and driving.
Rural reality
In December 2023, the Winnipeg Police Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) conducted their annual Holiday Checkstop Program. The Winnipeg Police Service are responsible for policing the city of Winnipeg and its surrounding areas, while the RCMP cover most of the rest of Manitoba. With the exception of larger cities like Brandon, which typically have their own police forces, the RCMP patrol more rural areas as opposed to urban areas, compared to the Winnipeg Police Service.
Throughout the month, the RCMP checked about a thousand more vehicles in Manitoba than the Winnipeg Police Service (5,223 vs. 4,023), but the RCMP issued around 670 per cent more Provincial Offences Act notices (853) compared to the Winnipeg Police Service (111), according to an RCMP press release.
The Winnipeg Police Service and the RCMP each found people driving over the legal limit, but the RCMP had more than double the number of drug immediate roadside prohibitions than the Winnipeg Police Service (12 vs. 5), which means they found more drivers under the influence of drugs, and more than three times the amount of Criminal Code alcohol impaired charges (46 vs. 13), which typically indicates a higher level of severity to the crime.
The differences between rural areas covered by the RCMP and urban areas covered by the Winnipeg Police Service are stark. So are some of the social customs. A divide exists between city and country people when it comes to driving under the influence.
The statistics highlight this fact: people from rural areas of Manitoba are more likely to drive impaired than people from urban areas.
Issues with data collection only exacerbate the problem. Because cities have the biggest sample size, it makes sense that funding is typically allocated to study impaired driving in urban centres, leaving more rural areas out.
The problem is also fuelled by the shortages in RCMP staffing around Manitoba.
The Traffic Injury Research Foundation found when data isn’t properly recorded, many consequences can follow. Information can be misinterpreted, and communities can gain a false sense of security if the frequency of impaired driving isn’t properly recorded. A lack of data means communities don’t know where the real problem is, and law enforcement isn’t encouraged to allocate resources appropriately.
As a result, resources are wasted and it’s harder to make policy changes.
Data reveals who is at the root of this crime.
An article called “Drinking, Substance Use and the Operation of Motor Vehicles by Young Adolescents in Canada” published in PLOS ONE reports that males are much more likely than females to be involved with and get caught impaired driving. These men are often from rural areas, and socio-economically disadvantaged populations. The report also noted how differences in cultural norms around risky behaviours, such as impaired driving, can create a higher tolerance in some communities.
In rural Manitoba, the impaired driving culture increases someone’s odds of driving under the influence. It starts with how children are raised to think about impaired driving. Lack of enforcement, reduced accessibility, higher use of off-road vehicles, and lack of data surrounding driving under the influence are also factors in the rates at which people from rural Manitoba drive impaired.
Culture of risk
Shared community values contribute to behaviour. Those who grow up around a culture of drinking and driving may take the consequences much less seriously.
Ethan Tremblay (whose name was changed to protect his privacy) learned to drive when he was six years old on his family farm near Thalberg, Manitoba. He grew up around adults who sometimes pretended DUIs didn’t exist. He said many adults around him didn’t think they’d get caught if they had a few beers, especially if they were working on the fields or fixing a tractor in the shop. With sparsely-used gravel roads as their main means of getting around, they may have felt safer from accidents — and consequences.
But a few years ago, his friend, Warren, passed away from crashing on a snowmobile while drinking. Despite knowing multiple people who have died from impaired driving, Tremblay’s attitude around getting behind the wheel while impaired hasn’t changed much.
“Everyone I know isn’t against drinking and driving, but they’re trying not to do it all the time,” he says.
While Tremblay doesn’t completely reject impaired driving, he views it as something to be moderated rather than eliminated.
“Have you seen that video from the ’80s when they made drinking and driving illegal?” Tremblay asks. He refers to a news clip of a man labelling impaired driving legislation as an attack on his rights.
“When I was younger, I agreed with that kind of thing. If you know what you’re capable of, then it should be okay.” He reflects for a moment, before saying at 22 years old, he doesn’t think his perspective has changed much on impaired driving since he was a teen.
A report published by the Journal of Cannabis Research in 2023 shows Tremblay isn’t an outlier when it comes to attitudes towards impaired driving by young people in rural areas. It says Manitobans aged 18 to 24 from rural areas are more likely to engage in impaired driving than their urban counterparts.
Like Tremblay, Williams-Hurdell grew up in a community fairly accepting of impaired driving.
“I started drinking at 15,” she says. She wasn’t much older the first time she tried cannabis.
Growing up, Williams-Hurdell always felt like she didn’t fit in anywhere. But when she tried different substances and drove around with friends, inebriated, it was an easy way to fit in.
“Everybody in my family, when I was growing up, was an alcoholic. My best friend’s dad has [had] five or six DUIs,” she says. “Everyone I knew was drinking and driving.”
Her mom, dad, aunts, and uncles all drank heavily and weren’t afraid to get behind the wheel. This had a deep impact on her perspective growing up.
The study by PLOS ONE reports that when new drivers are surrounded by cultures accepting of impaired driving, they are at increased risk for impaired driving behaviours.
This “everyone else does it“ feeling shows the foundation of a culture accepting impaired driving as a part of life.
“A dad having a beer on the way back from the field or beers after work is pretty common. Then guys have to drive home from the farm,” says Dez Ramsey. “You hear stories about it, for sure. It’s been normalized in a sense.”
Ramsey, a cattle farmer living in Pierson, a small town 160 kilometres southwest of Brandon, says impaired driving is fairly visible where he lives.
When kids grow up with stories glorifying impaired driving from people around them, it’s easy to see how they could feel differently about impaired driving when they get older.
“I have a friend who got a DUI,” Ramsey says. “He found [impaired driving] fun. I guess growing up in a small town, sometimes there’s not much to do. You couldn’t convince him to stop until he actually got his ticket,” he says.
Trevor Ens, president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving Winnipeg, says regardless of the culture in rural Manitoba, the answer is much simpler: people are ignorant.
“The dangers of impaired driving have been out there for forty plus years. So if someone’s still driving impaired, it is simply ignorance to what your behaviour could accomplish,” says Ens.
It took a while before Ramsey’s friend got caught. Some people who drink and drive never get their punishment, and it’s often because of lower rates of police enforcement in rural areas.
A dangerous path
Three months after her first impaired driving charge, Williams-Hurdell got her second DUI after crashing into a barbershop in Teulon.
She took a Clonazepam and drank lots of beer before dropping off her aunt at the hospital. She had just lost her job and was frequently mixing drugs and alcohol.
“Honestly, I was like ‘What’s the worst that can happen? I already have a DUI.’”
She went for a smoke in her aunt’s car before deciding she’d go for a drive.
“I blacked out,” she says. “I came to my senses in the back of a cop car.”
She remembers the cop car smelled like cleaning supplies and plastic.
“They’re like, ‘You ran into a building’. I’m like, ‘What?’”
Williams-Hurdell went to court, pleaded guilty on the recommendation of her lawyer, and went to the Women’s Correctional Centre in Headingley for a month.
After her release, she had to report to a probation officer every other Tuesday for a year and a half. If she missed a meeting, she’d go straight to jail again.
Without her license, she moved to Winnipeg with a boyfriend who treated her horribly and descended into a life that saw her drink less — but saw her use hard drugs more.
At 27, she continues to pay $300 every month to pay back the $42,000 she owes for hitting the barbershop.
The roads less patrolled
Rural areas continually face challenges with police enforcement because they cover big geographical areas and don’t have the resources and personnel to support it, says a report from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.
Put simply: rural areas have lots of dirt roads and not enough cops to patrol them all.
“I feel like it’s so much easier to drive impaired when you’re in the country,” says Jasmine Giesbrecht, a 28-year-old who grew up in Winnipeg. Giesbrecht recently moved to the outskirts of Austin, a small town 47 kilometres west of Portage La Prairie. “You can just whip down a back road.”
“Not to throw Austin under the bus, but I think it happens a lot here,” she says.
In her experience, people living in the city were more aware of impaired driving because they thought the cops were always waiting for them around the next corner.
Giesbrecht describes seeing cops “maybe three times” since she moved to Austin six months ago.
Giesbrecht also noticed how people in the country were more likely to band up to help their neighbours and friends avoid law enforcement. She was at a social in Austin when a group smoking outside noticed a cop drive by. Seconds later, someone announced to the crowd, “Nobody drive home! There’s a cop just outside!”
This shows another value held by many people in rural areas: they may not necessarily support impaired driving, but they certainly don’t support law enforcement as the answer to the problem.
After having two friends die from impaired driving, Giesbrecht worries about impaired drivers when she’s on the road at night.
A Global News article from 2025 says Manitoba RCMP face a severe lack of staffing with extra demand from rural communities. The RCMP asked in an email that “all members and active reservists across the country consider a temporary deployment” to help Manitoba with their staffing shortage.
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew called these RCMP shortages concerning in an interview with 680 CJOB.
“[Having more RCMP] is a way [we] can help catch the bad guys and help ensure the community relationships get strengthened,” said Kinew in response to the email.
“There’s not a lot of police presence in the area so you can pretty easily get away with it on a regular basis,” Ramsey says of Pierson.
The closest RCMP detachment from him is 20 minutes down the highway.
“You hardly ever see them,” he says. “It’s not ideal and it kind of defeats the purpose in my opinion.” He knows which towns the RCMP frequent more often and which highways are never patrolled.
Williams-Hurdell experienced similar things living in Winnipeg, Riverton, and Landmark.
She saw the pattern continue when she moved to Landmark three years ago. 40 kilometres from Winnipeg, she noticed people weren’t nearly as worried about being caught by the cops as they were in the city.
The Holiday Checkstop Program in December 2023 shows why these patrols are so needed in these communities.
No way home
While people in the city frequently have access to taxis or ride-sharing companies, most rural people would be hard-pressed to find an Uber to take them home from a spontaneous night out.
There is usually no public transport offered as an option to get home after a few drinks.
When living in the country, going out with friends requires more effort and planning than most people living in urban areas think about.
“Convenience is probably the biggest reason [why people engage in impaired driving],” says Ramsey. “Mainly because there’s no other real options.”
“Especially if you had to leave your truck in town to get a ride and then you’d have to go all the way back and get it,” says Ramsey. “It’s very inconvenient.”
Similar attitudes can be seen in different parts of rural Manitoba.
“You’re in the middle of nowhere and that’s your only way home,” Giesbrecht says.
She remembers living in the city and easily calling a ride-sharing company to take her home after a night out. “There’s just much more accessibility in cities,” she says.
While taxi services are sometimes available from Carberry to her home in Austin, “it would cost you an arm and a leg.”
Another option for rural people wanting to get home safe is walking.
“I’ve walked from the bar to my house twice,” Williams-Hurdell says. She remembers the two-and-a-half-hour walk distinctly. “It wasn’t even worth it.”
In rural areas, while people can choose to walk home, Williams-Hurdell points out they run the risk of being attacked by wild animals or by cars zooming by, especially if it’s late at night.
Off-road pursuits
Rural people frequently use off-road vehicles for alternative ways to get around.
According to the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, these off-road vehicles are difficult to patrol and hard to catch on forest trails and private property.
Tremblay, whose parents are heavily involved in a local snowmobiling club, often sees people hanging out at warm-up huts along snowmobile trails with cases of beer, knowing they have no other way to get home. Lots of these trails cross frozen lakes and through forests, making them only accessible by snowmobile, which means law enforcement will have a much harder time accessing the trails.
“They can put up as many posters as they want, but the people who enjoy going snowmobiling and having a few beverages and stuff, they’re not going to stop doing that. Because they enjoy doing that,” he says. He sees similar things when he’s driving around his ATV on backroad trails.
If ever followed by law enforcement, off-road vehicle drivers can easily swerve away from main roads, making it difficult for police to follow.
Because impaired driving on off-road vehicles is so hard to catch, rural people feel they can get away with a lot more.
Changing the culture
Williams-Hurdell sits in Dawson Trail Motor Inn on a Friday night, the closest bar to her home in Landmark, sipping at the water in front of her.
The bar smells like greasy pizza and stale beer. The third Nickelback song in a row booms in the background while a few grizzled-looking men cheer over a game of billiards.
She has six months left in the ignition interlock program, where she blows in a device that refuses to start her car if any alcohol is detected. She is working hard to regain her full license again, even if her license currently costs $1,600 for the year.
She’s learned a lot about how to drink safely and how to plan her rides accordingly. “That’s not who I am anymore,” she says. “I’m damn lucky to be alive and not have killed someone.”
Her stomach twists watching impaired people leave the bar, knowing they are likely driving home. No taxi service will drive out here for under $100.
She wants to tell people it’s not worth the risk or the financial burden but knows it’s not her place to lecture strangers.
“When my nephews get older, I’m going to be like ‘Don’t do what I did,’” she says. She’s going to walk them through every consequence they will face. She’s going to try to reverse the environment she was raised in.
Impaired driving culture in rural Manitoba isn’t just about poor decisions — it’s deeply ingrained cultural issues shaped by generational attitudes, limited enforcement, and other smaller factors. Until these underlying factors are addressed, many rural Manitobans will continue to see driving under the influence as another part of life, rather than the preventable crime it is.
