The province’s two police forces are encouraging safety on the roads this holiday weekend.

RNC Constable James Cadigan says the message to the public this weekend is simple.

He says they want to make it clear that aggressive driving and impaired driving “is not going to stand” and they will be working to remove that from the roads, especially this weekend where the volume of traffic will be higher.

RCMP Corporal Jolene Garland isn’t sure that people are getting the message about dangers behind the wheel.

She explains that so far this year in the RCMP jurisdiction they have responded to 21 fatal accidents resulting in the deaths of 23 people.  Of those, nine involved people not wearing their seatbelts, and eight where the driver was suspected to be impaired. For off-road vehicles, they’ve had nine fatalities this year.

Five people were not wearing seatbelts and four were suspected to be impaired.