The annual Celebration of Light fireworks display is on in Vancouver, and each year we have a number of clients either arrested or issued an Immediate Roadside Prohibition on these evenings.
The Vancouver Police have lamented recently that drinking and driving seems to be on the increase based on the number of people whom they have issued IRPs in the last few weeks. From this you could conclude that the IRP scheme isn’t working. If drinking and driving is increasing, then perhaps IRPs are to blame.
Of course the IRP scheme doesn’t work to deter drinking drivers. If you’re wealthy and you can afford the hit, then the risk is much lower than in the days when you faced a criminal charge. But the real point is that people don’t think about the consequences when they decide to drink and drive. Some are too drunk to think of anything. Others only think of the risk of being caught. Some do quick calculations and wrongly determine that they are okay to drive. Very few people think about the risk to others on the road and the moral implications of putting others at risk.
Which brings us back to the effectiveness of the IRP scheme. In our view, using unreliable evidence to punish people undermines any confidence in the system. Innocent people get IRPs and the OSMV hearings do not cause the innocent people to have their IRPs lifted. Guilty and innocent are both punished.
In criminal law we generally accept Blackstone’s axiom, i.e. “better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” With IRPs, for ever 10 who get an Immediate Roadside Prohibition, 2 to 3 are innocent and suffer wrongly. And the 1 in 10 who has their IRP lifted is likely guilty and simply lucky that it was lifted on a technicality.
Advocates of the IRP scheme argue that criminal charges didn’t work to reduce drinking and driving. But the numbers from Vancouver show that the IRP scheme is perhaps more ineffective. Over time it will become even less effective because many people will know someone who wrongly got an IRP, undermining any confidence in the system, and others will realize that for them it’s no big deal — just an expense. What we have noticed is that if you’re wealthy, an IRP is a minor inconvenience.
As we have said all along, the most effective way to reduce drinking and driving is regular education that reminds people that if they drink and drive, they will be caught. And to back up that message with visible enforcement.
We think the IRP scheme no longer deters people from drinking and driving as it did when it burst on the scene in September 2010. Its lasting effects are similar to fireworks — people gasp and then continue on.