Some rural roads in the southeast could be in pretty rough shape this spring after another long winter and the snow melting outside.

With that in mind, RM of Estevan Reeve Jason LeBlanc is hopeful that the RM will not have to issue road bans this year, and that drivers can use common sense to avoid roads that become undriveable.

"The spring break up is a moving target, it is each and every year," LeBlanc said. "Each year the melt comes at different times, so our intentions right now, as in the past two years, is that we are not going to be banning the roads at all."

"We tell people to use your own judgement on them. If it's frosty mornings, drive on the roads. If it's a wet, sloppy day, don't drive on the roads. But don't force our hand to be the ones that have to put on a road ban."

LeBlanc said they're trying to make the RM more hands off with less regulations.

"We'll kind of let the ratepayers use their own judgement and look after their own roads," he said.

He added that the road bans in the past often created headaches, in terms of frustration and more paperwork for companies.

"But again, if the system gets abused, well then we'll go back to that (bans)," he said.

The RM of Estevan includes roughly 326 miles of roads that would be banned if the decision was made to ban the entire RM, LeBlanc said.

"It's an intense amount of work to get all the signs out and put up and then regulated and watched, and then to remove them all again," he said. "Our approach is...they're good people, they're good ratepayers and they take responsibility for their own roads and they don't want to be the one that causes us to go out and put a ban on, because their names will be mentioned."

LeBlanc said the RM roads are used by a variety of people, including oil company workers and agriculture producers. If a ban is put in place, the restrictions depend on the weight of each vehicle.