One strange irony about the IRP scheme is that they don’t punish you for being drunk. If you’re just plain drunk, on that basis in itself the police can’t issue an Immediate Roadside Prohibition. They can ask you to blow, and if you blow Fail you can expect a 90-day IRP. If you try to blow and you can’t or the machine doesn’t work, the police will issue you a 90-day IRP for refusing.
But none of this says anything about your sobriety. How does that make sense? Does it matter if you’re drunk? Shouldn’t that be the issue that concerns us?
If they wanted to punish drunk drivers, they would have created an IRP for driving while impaired or intoxicated. But that’s clearly not…
Does it matter if you’re drunk?
If you’re drunk, presumably you’d blow a Fail on an ASD if it’s functioning properly, operated properly, calibrated properly and you have no alcohol in your mouth. But many people are dangerously intoxicated at much lower levels than the “Fail” on an ASD, and some people show few if any indication of impairment. You’d think we would have a system to punish the dangerous drunks, but that’s not how it’s designed in BC. There is, in fact, no IRP for impairment in BC. That’s right. the fact that you’re drunk or not doesn’t matter. It’s merely whether you blew a Fail (or Warn) or allegedly refused.
What about refusals?
Despite telling the Supreme Court of Canada that you could get a Charter of Rights remedy for a Fail IRP, RoadSafetyBC still refuses to lift Fail IRPs when the police violate Charter rights. They just don’t care. When it comes to refusal cases, however, they have no choice but to provided Charter rights because in many circumstances if your rights are violated you are entitled to refuse. That’s correct — if the police violate your Charter rights you may be entitled to refuse to blow. And so the question arises, what if you’re really drunk and you can’t manage to blow (because you’re drunk or whatever) and they violate your Charter rights?
The irony is we succeed in many IRP cases despite our clients having been genuinely drunk particularly where our clients are alleged to have refused. Because the RoadSafetyBC tribunal recognizes Charter remedies for refusal, they have no choice in many cases but to cancel the prohibition when presented with the right arguments.
Cheapo breathalyzers can go both ways
We’ve covered some of the major roadside breathalyzer (ASD) problems here on our blog over the years. There are countless smaller problems that can be just as catastrophic and more difficult to identify. The interesting thing is that they can go either way. Police officers have told us privately that they didn’t trust the ASDs because they’ve had to allow some people to continue driving after blowing less than a Warn despite symptoms that might have got them arrested for impaired driving before the law was changed. On calibration test checks we’ve seen many records where the ASD was found to be registering very high. On others, although less frequently, the ASDs when tested were giving reading that we’re much lower than the target reading.
So some people who shouldn’t be driving are inevitably allowed to continue down the road, despite being impaired in their ability to drive.
How does this make sense?
In any rational system designed to protect the public, the drunks would be removed from the road. That’s not how it works in BC, mainly because it’s a system designed to be cheap to operate, to generate revenue and to placate lobby groups.
If anyone thought about it beyond a superficial level, they’d realize that it doesn’t matter if you’re drunk. In fact, you can be too drunk to blow and we may still succeed in getting the IRP lifted.
Simply put, there are no grounds to issue an IRP on the basis of alcohol impairment or alcohol intoxication. That in itself is particularly revealing. If they wanted to punish drunk drivers, they would have created an IRP for driving while impaired or intoxicated. But that’s clearly not what motivated them to write the law and create the legal scheme that they did.
It appears that they were more interested in money.
And another thing…
Our last blog post contained a very caring and considered testimonial from one of our clients. As usual, we posted it on Facebook and monitored the reaction.
We received the standard uninspired comments from people who have the hate on. That we expect. But what was really wonderful was that we received so many thoughtful emails from clients thanking us for our hard work, and encouraging us to keep going.
We care about our clients and we want to succeed for our clients. Over the years we’ve run some marginal arguments that were pure experiments, but were nevertheless successful, solved the problem for our specific client and then gave us further tools to repair the problems for others.
So given all that we’ve been through, a sincere thank you to our clients and supporters. Your kindness keeps us going. And, as I wrote this blog post we received this very nice email:
Acumen Law provided myself a great service when I received a FAIL on BC’s roadside IRP device. I figured my life was shattered (living in the country with no means of transportation to work). Acumen Law Services stepped in with great friendly professional advice who took me under their wing?.
Within 21 days I received a temporary licence and a week later my hard plastic drivers licence arrived in the mail to my surprise. The adjudicator in my case decided to revoke the charges due to Acumen’s hard trusting work ethics & morals. I’d recommend Acumen Law to those who find themselves in a bind as I once was.
I was even reimbursed for the towing & impound fees. Way to go Acumen thank you so very much! I’ve got my life back in order again.
Via Fort St. John B.C. area
Our favourite thing is to repair our client’s lives.