Matt Gurney: The real drunk driving problem

As I was saying!!
Every December, the police tell us to drink responsibly and set up the spot checks to back up their warnings. It’s sad we still need to be told, but it’s good advice all the same. The situation has improved from decades past. Once upon a time, police officers pulled over impaired drivers only to send them on their way again with a friendly suggestion to take it easy — but that was another era. Those few who persist in driving drunk now have clearly have missed years of public service announcements. If they haven’t learned yet, they never will.
As an occasional drinker but frequent driver, I have a vested interest in keeping the roads safe. I never mind stopping at a spot check to briefly chat with an officer who is alert to even the faintest whiff of something tasty and fermented. Yet, though I fully support such efforts to get drunks off the road, I’m far from convinced that we’re going about it in a sensible way. Indeed, our approach to reducing impaired driving seems to be all too similar to how we secure airports — why focus on the real troublemakers when you can just target everyone?
I can’t speak for every province. Here in Ontario, though, Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government trumpets its tough-on-crime achievement of inventing a neat way to punish people who haven’t broken the law. Impaired driving, a Criminal Code violation, is defined federally as blowing a blood alcohol reading over .08% on a breath test or having over 80 milligrams of alcohol in a blood test. Either test will suffice as proof of guilt. Ontario has decided that it’s more comfortable setting the bar lower — at a blood alcohol level of .05%. Now, if you’re pulled over in Ontario and blow over .05 but less than .08, even though you are not legally drunk, your car will be towed, your licence suspended for three days and the incident will become part of your permanent driving record. Have fun at insurance renewal time, folks.
I also learned yesterday that a series of cases are winding their way through the courts, challenging the validity of Breathalyzer tests as conviction-worthy evidence. I’m willing to put my faith in the machines, and suspect that many of those claiming that they provided a false reading were probably pulled over while a slurring mess, swerving all over the road. But I did find this particular bit of wisdom from the Ontario judge who ruled in favour of Breathalyzer tests a bit worrisome: “[The law] does not support the proposition that the bar for success on a defence must be set so low that it can easily be cleared. There is probably no requirement that the law provide for any defence at all, much less one that is easily attainable.”
I understand the necessity of tightening up court policy so that every impaired driving charge isn’t thrown out on the grounds that the officer might have administered the test improperly, but no requirement for any defence at all? That would mean that in Ontario, you’re guilty until proven innocent of not breaking a law.
This isn’t good, not for anyone but constitutional lawyers and Charter experts, at any rate. They should have a field day with that one.
Adding insult to this injury is the fact that, just like with the above-mentioned airport screenings, we’re casting a tremendously wide net to catch a few easily identified individuals. It’s practically become a cliché: Almost every time a drunk driver kills someone, it’s quickly discovered that they are a chronic, repeat offender, with numerous prior convictions. Some are supposed to blow into an interlock device (a Breathalyzer wired into a car’s ignition) before driving, others are simply forbidden from driving at all. And yet they find ways around the restrictions and end up killing someone.
If lowering the legal limit to .05% will make the roads safer (and I’m sure it would), do it. If the rules governing admissibility of Breathalyzer evidence needed clarification, fine. But let’s not lose sight of the bigger issue — until the courts are willing to jail repeat offenders for long periods before they kill someone, innocents are going to keep dying. No spot check system, not even one backed by the strictest laws and regulations, will ever catch every drunk driver. So we need to clamp down hard at the first instance, not the tenth.
If the law needs changing and clarification, let the work begin there.
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