SUDBURY -- The Greater Sudbury Police are taking an aggressive approach to keep impaired drivers off the roads.

They are setting up RIDE, Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere programs anytime, anywhere on roads and trails while netting some strong results.

On Saturday officers with the Greater Sudbury Traffic Unit were out on the snowmobile trails in the Hanmer area.

"We have seen our numbers are going up with impaired by drugs. I attribute it to a lot more motivated officers, the pop up ride anywhere anytime is helping out with that. Cause we are out there and catching people off guard as to when we are out and where we are out," said Constable Andrew Hinds of the Greater Sudbury Police Service.

The checks are being set up morning afternoon and night in random locations all over the city.

"We are noticing that we are apprehending more drug impaired drivers during the day. And without sounding too aggressive we do want to generate the fear of being caught if you decide to drive while drunk or high," said Sergeant Ryan Johnson of the Greater Sudbury Police Service.

Police say results of the checks are surprising to some.

"The reality is we are going to be out anytime, could be out at 7 o'clock in the morning on a Sunday, we could be out a Tuesday at noon and to our surprise we get a lot of people saying to us, 'really someone is drinking at 10 o'clock in the morning?' but we do catch people at these times, so it is effective," said Constable Hinds.

In the first 11 days of February, Greater Sudbury Police arrested eight drivers for impaired, seven by drug and one by alcohol in the random checks.

"I can tell you that we did about 40 drug evaluations in 2019, and in 2020 we are closer to 100, so I do believe that we have been given the tools by the government to detect drug impaired drivers and we are getting much better at detecting them," said Sergeant Johnson.

The traffic unit says it's averaging about five anytime anywhere RIDE checks a week.