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To understand how the various laws work, imagine you are at a
party. You’ve had a number of drinks, but you aren’t really
drunk. You feel that if you’re careful you should be able to make
it home safely. Taking a cab would cost a few dollars and it would
be inconvenient to come back tomorrow to pick up your car. So you
decide to drive.
You drive slowly and carefully,
doing your best to obey all the rules of the road and watching for other
vehicles and pedestrians. Next, the unbelievable happens. You
notice flashing lights in the mirror. Or you find yourself in the
middle of a police spot-check.
A police officer approaches your
car and asks you a few questions. The officer
detects the odour of alcoholic beverages and has reason to suspect you
have been drinking. The officer requests that you step out of the
car and reads you a short statement demanding that you provide a breath
sample into an alcohol screening device. It would be an offence to
refuse. You blow.
If the "warn" indicator
lights up, the officer will issue an immediate 12- or 24-hour licence
suspension (depending on the province). Your car will likely be
towed away and you will have to find another way home. You can pick
up your licence at the police station after your suspension has ended and
you can retrieve your car after paying the towing and storage charges.
The fare for the cab ride home is starting to seem like a bargain.
Now imagine what happens if you
fail the breath sample. Your BAC is over the legal limit. The
officer has reasonable and probable grounds for believing you have
committed the crime of impaired driving. You are arrested and put
into the back of the cruiser to be transported to the police station,
where additional breath samples will be taken. Your car is towed
away.
At the police station, you are
allowed to call a lawyer. You have never been in any kind of trouble
before, but you find a number and make the call. (As the phone
rings, you wonder how happy the lawyer will be at being woken up in the
middle of the night. You also wonder whether they charge extra for
after hours calls! And how are you going to afford to pay the bill?) The
lawyer asks you a number of questions about the evening’s events and
reminds you that it is a crime to refuse to provide a breath sample.
When you blow into the
breath-testing instrument, your reading is .11. You are charged with
having a BAC in excess of the legal limit under the Criminal Code
of Canada. You are photographed and fingerprinted. You feel
you are being treated like a criminal. You are.
The police officer fills out a
number of forms. Your licence is suspended for 90 days. You
sign a piece of paper promising that you will appear in court at the
specified time and date.
You end up having to pay for the
cab ride home anyway.
Your day in court arrives. It’s
been about three months since you were charged, and you have scrambled to
get to work and everywhere else using other means of transportation.
You are standing before the judge with your lawyer at your side.
(You have already spent several hours with your lawyer and you now
know how much this is costing.) You are convicted. The judge
acknowledges that this is your first offence and that you have not been in
trouble with the law before. You are ordered to pay a $600 fine,
prohibited from driving for one year, and ordered to perform 100 hours of
community service.
A week after your day in court, you
receive a letter from the provincial driver licensing office. As a
result of your conviction, your licence will be suspended for 12 months.
Well, at least you’ve had some practice using the bus. In
addition, before you can get your licence reinstated you must attend a
drinking driver program, which you have to pay for. On top of that,
you have to pay a fee to get your licence back.
When the dust has settled, it has
been a trying and costly experience. You have a criminal record.
You won’t be driving for another 12 months. And the bills! There
are the towing and storage fees, the program fees, the licence
reinstatement fees and your lawyer’s fees. You also know that when
you do get your licence back, car insurance will cost two to three times
what you used to pay. If you drove for a living, you could be out of
work. And to think that all this could have been avoided with a few
dollars for a cab ride home!
If you get caught again, the
penalties are even more severe. Second offenders face a mandatory
sentence of 14 days in jail, and your licence will be suspended for up to
60 months. Third-time offenders serve a minimum of three months in
prison and might never be eligible to obtain a licence again.
That is the best case scenario —
it could have been worse for you. You could have been killed or injured, or
been responsible for the death or disability of others. The laws for
impaired drivers who cause death or injury are very tough. Impaired
driving causing bodily harm is an offence punishable by up to 10 years in
prison. Impaired driving causing death means up to 14 years in
prison.
Canada’s laws on impaired driving reflect
the seriousness of the offence. The consequences of a conviction are
severe and long-lasting. One of the purposes of such laws is to
punish offenders. Another purpose is to prevent people from getting
behind the wheel after drinking too much. There’s a lot at stake.
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