BC thinking about watering down new drunk driving rules | GTAMotorcycle.com

BC thinking about watering down new drunk driving rules

T

twinn

Well-known member
From CTV

http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/..._laws_101108/20101108?hub=BritishColumbiaHome


The new regs came into effect in Sept.

The article stats that resturants and bars are complaining, me thinks it might have to do with a lot less tax revunue being collected- I just dont see the resuturant/bar lobby being that powerful.

Either way, it will be a good thing. I hate this .05 nonsense. The criminal charge is at .08, leave it at that or make it zero. Stupid .05 nonsense just makes criminals out of people that had no intent to drink and drive. All it does it make the police stats look better as they will nab more people at ,05 then .08.
 
Can't wait to see the response from the MADD-cows.
 
WTH, are all these MADD people really just puritanical prohibitionists in disguise?

Disband already, disband! Your services are no longer needed. Thank you, good bye.
 
fastar1 said:
WTH, are all these MADD people really just puritanical prohibitionists in disguise?

Disband already, disband! Your services are no longer needed. Thank you, good bye.
Click to expand...

Yes they are. I think the term is actually neo-prohibitionists.
 
DJM said:
Yes they are. I think the term is actually neo-prohibitionists.
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I thought the politically correct designation for them was "neo-prohibitionist thieves." (referring to irregularities between money collected, money spent on advertising and money spent on bona fide programs) :cool:
 
Is the BC government making any sense?

Let see, the law is .08, but like here they have imposed this discretionary .05 where you COULD lose your car for 90 days = officer's mood, which I really don't like.

Then once the bars and restaurants mention alcohol consumption is down, the province wants to educate people that it is OK to have a drink? But wait - they want to reduce drunk driving deaths.

Problem - from my understanding the reason there is the .08 limit in most places around the world is because that is a threshold for what is too much. I assume those causing problems on the road are usually not the ones under .08.

Therefore - it doesn't matter picking on those under .08 in order to curb the DUI related deaths. Therefore this law, like the one in Ontario is just a political move.
 
Metastable said:
Problem - from my understanding the reason there is the .08 limit in most places around the world is because that is a threshold for what is too much. I assume those causing problems on the road are usually not the ones under .08.

Therefore - it doesn't matter picking on those under .08 in order to curb the DUI related deaths. Therefore this law, like the one in Ontario is just a political move.
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In most places around the world, the legal BAC limit is .05 or less. Ontario, BC and others provinces adopting that level are simply moving in line with the rest of the world and with the most recent research into the relationship between BAC levels and driving impairment.
 
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Metastable said:
Is the BC government making any sense?

Let see, the law is .08, but like here they have imposed this discretionary .05 where you COULD lose your car for 90 days = officer's mood, which I really don't like.

Then once the bars and restaurants mention alcohol consumption is down, the province wants to educate people that it is OK to have a drink? But wait - they want to reduce drunk driving deaths.

Problem - from my understanding the reason there is the .08 limit in most places around the world is because that is a threshold for what is too much. I assume those causing problems on the road are usually not the ones under .08.

Therefore - it doesn't matter picking on those under .08 in order to curb the DUI related deaths. Therefore this law, like the one in Ontario is just a political move.
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They always were just political moves. Getting the hard-core perpetual drunks off the road would make more sense, but it doesn't cast a wide enough net to be politically "sexy." Making the politically expedient move of catering to the MADD crowd, and seemingly hammering on impaired drivers is all well and good, until it starts to empty the tax coffers.
 
Rob MacLennan said:
Untrue; 0.05 does not appear to be any more prevalent a limit than 0.08.

http://www.driveandstayalive.com/articles%20and%20topics/drunk%20driving/artcl--drunk-driving-0005--global-BAC-limits.htm

http://www.drinkdriving.org/worldwide_drink_driving_limits.php
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The first link you gave has a 2003 copyright date on it. Things have moved a bit since then. However, even on that dated page there exists a footnote at the bottom of the table that states:
Note: At least 72% (i.e. 60) of the 83 applicable countries have a BAC limit =/< 0.05% (excluding religiously-mandated zero limits)​

​
The second link you gave lists 262 countries so the sample size there is much larger. Of the countries with information provided, 147 of them are tagged at .05 or less. There are about 3 with > .05 and < .08 BAC limits. The number of countries at .08 or greater is about 80. That's the raw country count numbers.


Now go back and look at the countries themselves.
  • The majority of western industrialized nations listed are already at the .05 or less standard.
  • Population wise, an even larger majority of the world's population are living under a legal limit of .05 or less.
 
The date on the first link was why I also supplied the second. On the second you'll find 68 countries with a 0.08 limit and 75 with a 0.05 limit.

*EDIT* On the second list toss out all of the countries that are nominally Islamic, where the consumption of alcohol is functionally illegal anyway ;)
 
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Rob MacLennan said:
The date on the first link was why I also supplied the second. On the second you'll find 68 countries with a 0.08 limit and 75 with a 0.05 limit.
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I believe I said the majority of the world was moving to .05 OR LOWER. That puts the count at 147 for the lower limit versus about 80 for .08 or higher, for countries listed in the second link with provided limit information.
 
Rob MacLennan said:
*EDIT* On the second list toss out all of the countries that are nominally Islamic, where the consumption of alcohol is functionally illegal anyway ;)
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I think that's a gross generalization that doesn't apply except to a handful of the most fundamentalist Islamic states, such as Bahrain, Mali, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, & UAE as specifically outlined in your first link. Also, the list in your second link appears to make a point of differentiating between Alcohol Probited (nationwide) vs Zero Tolerance for alcohol while driving in many cases.

The counter argument to the "toss out Islamic states" argument is Indonesia, which is nominally Islamic but has no stipulated impaired driving BAC limit at all, Turkey with a .05 BAC limit, Albania with a .01 limit, etc. Implicit in those numbers is that alcohol use, while nominally discouraged or even prohibited by Islamic religious practice depending on sect, is not legally prohibited on a national level except in the most fundamentalist of Islamic states.

Besides, I counted 40 states in total with zero tolerance for any alcohol at all while driving, and the bulk of them of are not Islamic at all. Throwing out the Islamic states doesn't really change the landscape very much when it comes to trends in BAC levels around the world..
 
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Except that Indonesia, while having a large percentage of Islamic citizens, is not what I would call an Islamic state (government founded on Theocratic principles).

Then you have the places that have a STATED level, that doesn't really apply in practise: Russia, Georgia, etc..

*EDIT* Countries that don't list a blanket ban on alcohol may ban sales, but still permit it to be possessed by tourists, for example. Qatar is an example of such.
 
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twinn said:
...Either way, it will be a good thing. I hate this .05 nonsense. The criminal charge is at .08, leave it at that or make it zero. Stupid .05 nonsense just makes criminals out of people that had no intent to drink and drive. All it does it make the police stats look better as they will nab more people at ,05 then .08.
Click to expand...


Science shows that there is a tremendous increase in Drinking related crashes and fatalities and that occurs in the area of .08 to .12 (iirc.) Therefore .08 makes sense.

Ontario had a law that said at .05 with the roadside breathalysers that the driver could either go to the station and do a proper test or accept a temporary suspension for 24 hours, which did not go on the driving record. The accuracy of the roadside devices was in question so this gave people that were close a reasonable choice and got people off the road that might be close to breaking the law. It seemed like a fair and reasonable way to deal with things.

Drinking and driving is a big problem, but the problem relates to people being at high Blood Alcohol levels; and repeat offenders are a big issue. The average person having one or two drinks isn't and has never been a problem. Nonetheless, the extremists that are against everything have said "we have to do something" so they figure that penalizing al the reasonable people and scaring them from having even one drink makes it look like they are doing something useful. They aren't of course, as the real answer is probably to do much more severe punishments to people that are actually doing harm.

..Tom
 
V-Tom said:
The average person having one or two drinks isn't and has never been a problem.
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And for the average person, a couple of drinks over a couple of hours will not put you over .05 BAC and should not be a problem as far as the new laws are concerned.
 
turbodish said:
And for the average person, a couple of drinks over a couple of hours will not put you over .05 BAC and should not be a problem as far as the new laws are concerned.
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But for those who seem to have an overweening idea of their capacity, a "warning" is a valuable thing. Unfortunately things have gone from:

OK => Warning => Penalty

... to ...

OK => Penalty
 
Rob MacLennan said:
But for those who seem to have an overweening idea of their capacity, a "warning" is a valuable thing. Unfortunately things have gone from:

OK => Warning => Penalty

... to ...

OK => Penalty
Click to expand...

We had an early-warning penalty before. It was the 12-hour suspension, which was little more than a slap on the wrist. It wasn't even a hint of a valuable warning for many. A dedicated drinker could easily take that warning over and over again ad infinitum, and that "valuable warning" provided absolutely no incentive to avoid repeating the behaviour.

The new three-day suspension for a first-timer is tougher than the old 12-hour one, but it's still little more than an early-warning slap on the wrist. The first-timer slap on the wrist only starts to escalate into real penalties if the driver doesn't take heed of that first "valuable warning", and instead becomes a repeat customer.
 
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