The holiday season is a lot of fun with events, get-togethers and good food and drink. It also comes with stress and expenses, obligations and sometimes serious mistakes. Police in BC put in a lot of effort to catch suspected drinking drivers at this time of year which is why we see so many people get a DUI at Christmas. It’s an additional difficult thing to deal with during the holiday season.
Police Roadblocks
If you had even one drink and pulled up to a police DUI roadblock, you are likely terrified of what will happen next. It takes very little to garner the scrutiny of the police and even if you have no symptoms of having been drinking, the police can demand that you blow into a roadside breathalyzer. At a police roadblock, there is little or no evidence of bad driving behaviour, which can be of great assistance to your lawyer when dealing with the case.
The roadside breathalyzers we use in Canada are called ASDs, which is short for Approved Screening Device. The actual model is the Alco-Sensor FST. The particular programming in the BC ASD does not display the actual blood-alcohol concentration, but it shows a range. If you blow Fail on an ASD, the device is telling the operator that the breath collected indicates a blood-alcohol concentration of over .08.
Blowing Fail on an ASD
BC has distinct DUI laws. If you blew a Fail on an ASD, chances are you were issued a 90-day Immediate Roadside Prohibition. We use “IRP” for short and so does the government but in essence, this is the main type of DUI you face in BC. Kyla Lee of our office wrote the textbook for lawyers on this subject, Immediate Roadside Prohibitions in Western Canada and her TikToks cover many of the important aspects of the law.
Important deadlines for a Christmas DUI
One mistake people seem to make is they assume they can deal with the DUI after Christmas when they have a little more time. The danger is missing an important deadline. If you are issued an IRP or an ADP (the other type of immediate 90-day DUI in BC), there is a fixed 7-day window to dispute the matter. The time isn’t extended beyond the holidays and the fixed timeline remains in place during the holiday season.
Defences to a Christmas DUI
In almost every case there is a defence to a DUI but the issue is identifying one that will succeed in the hearing. Kyla Lee and her team are geared up to deal with DUIs issued during the holiday season.