Roadblocks taking toll on drunk drivers
The cops don’t even get a chance to set up their Rock Bay roadblock before snagging the first drunk driver of the night. They just round the corner and there she is, her car pointing in the wrong direction after spinning out on rain-slicked Bridge Street. It’s 10:09 p.m. Friday.
“Any alcohol for you to drink today?” Const. Jen Kennedy asks the woman.
Just a glass of wine when it was still daylight, is the reply. Really? OK, maybe a second glass later. Sure. When the driver blows into a roadside screening device, the screen flashes “Fail,” meaning her blood-alcohol is over the .08 limit (over .10, actually, as the devices are calibrated high).
The driver ends up crying in the back of a police car. Her vehicle is towed, will be gone for 30 days. Her licence is suspended for 90.
Getting them back won’t be cheap. The tow and impound will top $800. There’s a $500 penalty, a $250 licence reinstatement fee, a $930 remedial-driving course, higher ICBC premiums, maybe one of those ignition gizmos that you have to blow into before your car will start. …
It’s a reminder, as we head into New Year’s Eve, that while drinking and driving might feel like it should be a thing of the past — like eight-track tapes, puka shells and men with perms — plenty of people still do it.
In fact, Victoria police nailed 42 impaired drivers between Dec. 1 and Christmas Eve. That’s just VicPD, not the Saanich police, the West Shore RCMP, or Kennedy’s outfit, the Integrated Road Safety Unit.
Operating throughout the capital region, IRSU officers are drawn from local police departments. Kennedy was seconded from the Saanich force, but used to work in California, where she dealt with 76 fatal crashes in one six-year stretch. “That’s a lot of dead bodies,” she says. Both Kennedy and her boss, Sgt. Alex Yelovatz, have seen enough of them to lose sympathy for those who drink (or drug) and drive.
Most people get the message, or at least were frightened into smartening up after the introduction of immediate roadside driving prohibitions in 2010. Even blowing a “Warn” — that’s over .05 — means at least a three-day ban.
Others still take chances. Yes, they might do the right thing and plan how they’re going to get home before heading out on New Year’s Eve, when they know they’ll be partying, but it’s the other times, the Friday night after work where one drink leads to another, that lead to otherwise good citizens making bad choices.
People who would never rob a bank or punch someone in the nose will drive when they shouldn’t, thinking of it as being like basketball — no harm, no foul — right up until they kill someone. Doesn’t matter whether you’re a bad guy with a gun or somebody whose reaction time behind the wheel was slowed just that little critical bit (you need not be totally hammered to cause a crash), dead is dead. On average, impaired drivers kill 65 people a year in B.C. — down from 300 in the olden days, but still.
Most of those driving through Friday’s roadblocks were cheerful and supportive. A few tried to duck down side streets, a telling move. Some tried to turn into poker players when asked if they had consumed alcohol. “Everybody says ‘one.’ Nobody says ‘I had five beer,’ ” Kennedy observed. (There are the odd exceptions. Once, after seeing a vehicle wheel slightly sloppily into a liquor store parking lot, Yelovatz asked the driver if he had been drinking. Instead of replying, the man simply thrust out his keys. On another occasion, a driver who was trying to nonchalantly lean on the roof of his car slid down the windshield, down the hood and onto his back on the pavement, from which vantage point he described his predicament accurately and succinctly.)
In any case, the words that come out of a driver’s mouth matter less than the odour. And no, mints and gum won’t mask the smell of booze. Nor will firing up a smoke when you see the roadblock. “The freshly lit cigarette is always a clue,” Kennedy says. So is turning your head away when answering the cop’s questions. Identifying yourself as the designated driver won’t save you from testing. Often that just means you have had four drinks instead of seven.
Also note that a brand-new change to the law means police no longer need to find signs of alcohol impairment before making drivers blow, though that doesn’t mean testing people for no reason at all. It still takes some form of red-flag-raising behaviour — speeding past a marked police car, say — to bring out the screening device.
The surest way to avoid trouble is to take B.C. Transit, a taxi, or one of those services where one person drives you home and another follows with your car. Don’t bother whining if they (or Uber) aren’t available and you don’t feel like walking. It won’t win any arguments with the traffic cops who deal with dead bodies.