Drinking and driving

You know it's wrong, but do you know why it's wrong?

Just like driving after smoking a joint, driving with alcohol in your system is extremely risky. Forget about the law for a minute and think about how much attention you need to drive when you're perfectly straight. And it's not just you: you might be the safest driver on the planet but you still have to be alert about what everyone else is doing, whether it's another driver, a person crossing the street, a loose dog or nasty weather. There are so many unexpected things that can happen on the roads, and alcohol, as an impairing substance, reduces your ability to react to surprises.

In Canada, impaired driving is a common cause of traffic collisions. The Criminal Code of Canada makes it a serious criminal offence for anyone to drive a motor vehicle while their ability to do so is impaired by alcohol or drugs. This applies to not only public roads and highways but also to private yards and parking lots and when they say "motor vehicle", boats, snowmobiles and aircraft are also covered. It is a separate and distinct criminal offence to drive with a blood alcohol concentration exceeding 80 mg/100ml.

The consequences for drinking and driving are extremely serious and include some or all of the following:

• Maximum penalty of life imprisonment if you cause a death while driving drunk.
• Immediate provincial/territorial licence suspension: right there, on the spot.
• Suspension from driving that is measured in years, if you are convicted in court.
• In extreme cases, some people are banned from driving forever.
• Increased insurance rates that are sometimes more than you can afford.
• An order to install an alcohol-detection device in your car which forces you to take a breathalyzer test before starting the car.
• A requirement to submit to an alcohol/drug assessment.
• A requirement to participate in a driver education program.
• A requirement to participate in an alcohol treatment program.

Doesn't really sound like a wise choice, does it? Now check out these stats:

• About 40% of teens who were killed in a motor vehicle had been drinking alcohol.
• 75% of those 40% above had blood alcohol concentrations over the legal limit of 0.08%.
• Teenagers who are killed or seriously injured in alcohol-related crashes tend to be males.
• Most of these serious collisions occur on weekends and often at night.
• Young drivers are at the greatest risk of being killed when it comes to drinking and driving.
• Most of these deaths occur in a single vehicle crash and the driver and/or passengers are killed.

First offence?

If it's your first offence, some people say that getting stopped for drinking and driving is no big deal but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, there's a minimum fine of $600 and a driving ban of one, two or three years for a first offence. Beyond that, a second offence means guaranteed jail time (at least 14 days behind bars) and a 2-5 year driving ban. If it happens again, you'll be sent to prison for a minimum of 90 days and possibly banned from driving for life. And if you cause a death while driving drunk, the maximum penalty is life imprisonment. Most people would think that's a big deal.

Alcohol, marijuana and other substances - whether taken alone or together - increase your chances of killing yourself or someone else in a car crash

Just like alcohol, marijuana and other substances change the way you see and hear things and since driving demands your total attention, at all times, marijuana works against you. You might be the safest driver in town when you're straight, but there's no way to predict the effects of impairing drugs on your abilities except to say that they'll get worse. A Quebec study* showed that, between 1999 and 2001, alcohol was found in 35% of fatally injured drivers, and approximately one third of these fatalities involved a combination of other drugs and alcohol. The drug most frequently detected other than alcohol was marijuana.

*Source: The Contribution of Alcohol and Other Drugs Among Fatally Injured Drivers in Quebec: Some Preliminary Results

The bottom line

Driving requires your full attention and with every drop of alcohol you take, you reduce your ability to drive safely and responsibly. You also dramatically increase the chances of hurting or killing yourself, another driver, some innocent bystander - or the people in the car with you. Even if you don't cause a collision, but just get stopped by the police, the penalties are enormous and will likely change your life forever.