When the Immediate Roadside Prohibition scheme was introduced, the Government trumpeted the new .05% limit as an extraordinary advancement in dealing with drinking and driving in BC. For decades the law had been that you could be subject to a 24-hour prohibition if you were in the “Warn” range (theoretically .05-.08%). The new law would up the punishment to a minimum 72 hour driving prohibition (3-day prohibition for Warn).
The ostensible concern was that a 24-hour driving prohibition was not sufficient to deter people from driving in the Warn range. So the Government came up with a new panoply of confusing prohibitions. If this was your first Warn on an ASD, then you would get a 3-day prohibition and impound. If you had received one previous 24-hour or 3-day, you would get 7 days of prohibition and impound. If this was the third time and in the past been given either a 24-hour, 3 or 7 day, upon blowing Warn you would be prohibited for 30-days, your car impounded for the same period at your expense, and you would then need to do the RDP and have the Interlock installed.
Statistically a very small number of accidents are caused by people in the Warn range. Above that range, the numbers increase dramatically. It follows that punishing these individuals for the specific event does not directly protect the public. But the issue does not end there. There is value to the driving public having fear of repercussions. The point is that people judge their own condition before driving and if they are worried about being close to the line, some people will choose not to drive. If they think the line is .05% it is probably better than thinking that they can have another drink and be okay.
The underlying suggestion was that the 24-hour prohibition scheme had been a failure. We have observed that a number of people believed that they could drink and drive and that at worst they would “just get a 24-hour.” So the message of the 24-hour scheme tended to reinforce for some people that it was okay to drink and drive. Obviously this is a problem. It is an unintended consequence of the 24-hour scheme. It is what is known as a perverse incentive — the law encourages the very behaviour it was created to discourage.
Of course, the Government did not want to suggest that the 24-hour scheme was a failure. Their argument was that more punishment means less drinking drivers. Sure, everyone (almost) is sober enough to not make the same mistake 25 hours later. Their point was that this will deal with repeat “Warn” drivers. The 7 and 30 day prohibitions would allow the Government to address the grave public threat of repeat “Warn” drivers. Did it work?
The stats above were recently published by the Government here (page removed by the Government May 29, 2012). They are antiquated and missing essential information. And they only provide the statistics for the first 104 days of the IRP scheme. Of 2065 people who blew “Warn” in this period, only 8 had a previous 24-hour or 3-day prohibition. In this period, not a single person was a 2-time repeat offender.
A number of questions follow from this. Firstly, are taxpayers getting value for money having paid for the creation of this huge expensive (although perhaps profitable) scheme to deal with these prohibitions? There were only 8 people in the province who were recidivist “Warn” range drivers. Did we need to spend all of that money in order to prohibit those people for 4 more days than everyone else?
And then what about 3-days versus 24-hours? Does this support in any way that 72 hours are more effective than 24 hours to let someone think about the matter? And is it really a disincentive to doing the same thing in the future? Is there any point at all to the 30-day scheme? Or is it simply bad policy and political pandering?
Neither the 24-hour, 3 or 7 day prohibitions have any significant rehabilitative component. They are simply prohibitions where you pay a little to get your car back and to get back on the road. The 30-day prohibitions are pointless.
It seems to us that there is no point to the current “Warn” range IRP scheme with the .o5% threshold. Prohibiting a driver for 72 hours will not teach them anything they would not learn in 24 hours.
Having said that, in our view everyone who receives a 24-hour should be required to participate in some form of proportionate educational program to ensure that they understand that they must not attempt to drink to the point where they are just under the limit.