Information relating to impaired driving.
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.
A person that left a nightclub had one drink early in the evening and drank water rest of the night because they knew they were driving. This person spoke with many officers upon leaving, went for coffee and gas and saw another officer and spoke with him. He left, driving down the highway a little faster than he should have at approximately 2 am.
In case you missed it, the alcohol impaired supervisor of a learner driver ran afoul of police in Nelson this week. They called upon their son to use the family vehicle to transport them home from a party and were checked in a roadblock.
The B.C. Coroner's Service has released statistics on All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) deaths in the province from 2009 to 2018. Impaired driving was involved in half of them.