GUYSBOROUGH – Road safety accounted for more than four in every 10 calls reported by Guysborough County District RCMP over a six-month period this year, according to a Journal analysis of the detachment’s public reports.
Five RCMP From the Cruiser reports covering February through July identified 304 road-safety calls among 732 calls for service – equivalent to 41.5 per cent of the total.
The reports show 39 road-safety calls in February, 39 in March, 46 in April, 120 during May and June combined and 60 in July. Road safety was the largest category shown in every report.
The RCMP notes that some calls of a sensitive nature are not included in its charts. The 304 figure therefore represents road-safety calls identified in the public reports, not necessarily every road-safety occurrence handled by police during the period.
The five reports describe eight separate impaired-driving-related incidents over the six-month period: two in February, one in March, two in May and three in July. No such incidents were described in the April or June reports.
Speeding also figured in the enforcement record. The February cruiser report says 13 drivers were charged during that month with exceeding the posted speed limit.
Police conducted 43 check stops over the six-month period – seven in February, three in March, seven in April, 13 during May and June and another 13 in July. Locations included Canso, Guysborough, Sherbrooke, Boylston, Larry’s River, Spanish Ship Bay, Whitehead, Country Harbour and Port Bickerton, among other communities.
Road safety may have been the largest category of calls shown in the Guysborough RCMP reports, but it was not the detachment’s only workload.
Across the five published reports covering the six months from February through July, the aggregate totals for the other categories were 116 calls to assist the public, 90 classified as “other,” 84 crimes against property, 44 crimes against persons, 29 involving other provincial statutes and 26 involving other Criminal Code matters.
Cases highlighted elsewhere in the reports included the recovery of two boats reported missing, a break-in at a cottage, assault and weapons allegations following a May altercation in Canso, and a July mischief case in which RCMP said a 21-year-old man was arrested after a bicycle was thrown through a car window.
Separately, the Nova Scotia Child Death Review Committee’s second annual report, released Aug. 13, found substantially higher rates of accidental death among young people living in rural areas of the province.
The committee examined deaths of Nova Scotia residents under 25 between 2009 and 2025. It recorded 489 accidental deaths, with motor vehicle collisions accounting for 55 per cent, followed by drug toxicity at 22 per cent and drowning at eight per cent.
Between 2011 and 2025, the accidental death rate among people under 25 was 14 per 100,000 in rural communities, compared with 9.1 per 100,000 in urban areas. Of 228 motor vehicle deaths during that period for which rural or urban residence was classified, 73 per cent involved rural residents. Death rates for both 15- to 19-year-olds and 20- to 24-year-olds were higher in rural areas.
The provincial report does not provide separate mortality figures for Guysborough or Antigonish counties.
Province wide, among accidental motor vehicle deaths examined for contextual factors from 2010 to 2025, 64 per cent occurred between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. At least 40 per cent of those who died while travelling in cars or trucks were not properly using a seatbelt or car seat, while that information was unavailable or unknown in another 31 per cent of cases. Motorcycle and ATV deaths were higher during 2021-25 than in previous periods.
The committee recommends expanding the mandate of the province’s Road Safety Advisory Committee to include ATV and other recreational vehicle crashes and developing an action plan on off-highway vehicle safety.
