Tougher Drunk Driving Laws Long Overdue

(Aired on September 20, 2010)

British Columbia now has the toughest drunk driving laws in Canada. Starting today, it's going to be easier for law enforcement officials to take away your car, slap you with a fine and take away your driving privileges. Not only for the drivers who are over .08, but there's a new "warning" category, where you can lose your licence for three days and pay a fine to boot. Over .08, penalties are even stiffer. You could get a 90 day driving ban. And speeders caught doing more than 40 clicks over the speed limit will be affected too, getting their vehicles impounded for a week with escalating penalties for subsequent offences.

It's about time. It's also good that refusing to take a breathalyzer test at the scene is no longer a way out. The penalty is immediate. It will make all of us think twice, not only those who drink more heavily, but even those of us who are more social drinkers. Speed and alcohol are contributors to so many accidents that it's about time we tried to take steps to curb the problem. And the Liberal government, who have been criticized on so many fronts recently, deserve to take some credit for this latest initiative. It's long overdue and hopefully will serve as a model for other provinces to follow.

The only problem I see is having the police resources to enforce these laws. We actually catch very few problem drivers. Our resources don't provide for the traffic checks we need to enforce these laws. We'll certainly do a better job than before even with the resources we have now, but we will almost certainly only catch a small percentage of offenders unless we put enough officers in place to really do an effective job. That might be a little longer in coming. But at least we've made a start, and hopefully we'll get people thinking before they become idiots on the road.