Information relating to impaired driving.
The Canadian Center for Drug Abuse and Addiction has released a report titled Measuring the Impact of Drug Impaired Driving. The report suggests that not enough is known about driving while impaired by drugs other than alcohol and its effects on people living in Canada.
The background to this document states that: "As the prevalence of alcohol-impaired driving decreases, and as more jurisdictions decriminalize or legalize cannabis, it is increasingly important for policy makers to have accurate information on the prevalence and pattern of drug driving."
Webinar hosted by the BC Injury Prevention Unit and conducted by Dr. Jeff Brubacher, Associate Professor, Dept. of Emergency Medicine, University of British Columbia. Unfortunately, the video sound is poor.
The case of R v Francisco involves a collision on June 7, 2019 in Burnaby that resulted in the death of a pedestrian, Louise Landreth. Roberto Francisco was driving a BMW sedan erratically over a period of about one hour and twenty minutes until a collision at high speed resulted in a loss of control and Ms. Landreth being struck and killed.
A recent article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal examined impaired driving and the legalization of recreational cannabis. It concluded that there is potential for a small but important increase in fatal motor vehicle collisions due to recreational marihuana use.
Whoosh! Here comes a car overtaking my police vehicle at 144 km/h in the posted 110 km/h zone. It's dark at 11:30 pm and at that speed, any animal or object on the road won't be identified in time and a collision is almost sure to occur.
It's not yet zero tolerance for all drivers, but the B.C. government has enacted the Immediate Roadside Prohibition (IRP) program, reducing the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) threshold for sanctions from 80 mg% to 50 mg%.
Our society's tolerance for drinking and driving continues to narrow. When I started policing in the 1980s it was a major investigation to convict someone for impaired driving. An investigator had to develop skills and experience in the detection of alcohol impaired drivers to form grounds to make a breath demand and convince the court that it was an appropriate decision.
This case looks at host liability for a crash on Saltspring Island following a party at the home of Stephen and Lidia Pearson. Ryan Plambeck drove away from the party, left the roadway and crashed into the woods beside the road. He was killed and Calder McCormick, a passenger in the vehicle was seriously injured.
In the early morning hours of April 25, 2015 Kendall Derkson was driving her vehicle on Highway 10 in Surrey. She struck a vehicle driven by Patrick Chan, destroying her vehicle in the process. ICBC refused to cover her loss as she was in breach of her conditions of insurance for being “incapable of proper control of the vehicle” at the time of the collision due to the influence of alcohol.