Imagine you were at your favorite sports bar, watching your favorite game or playing few games of pool. You just finished your last drink, come out of the bar and get into your vehicle to get home. Te moment you pull your car out of parking lot and get on the road, you see a police car on your tail with flashing red lights on because they were targeting the place and just waiting for people like you to get out of the bar so they could nail them down. or you got the bad luck getting pulledover at a RIDE checkpoint. You were totally into your senses, driving perfectly fine not all over the road, not changing lanes randomly, not driving too slow or speeding. In other words you are not “impaired”. You just got pulled over because you were coming out of a bar.  You have never done anything illegal in your life and the next thing you know that you are about to get labeled as a Criminal (if you can’t afford a lawyer to pay roughly about ten thousand dollars because if don’t have money well too bad because legal aid doesn’t not cover the drink and drive cases). You are not asked to take a Physical Coordination/Standard Field Sobriety test to see if you are “impaired” they just take your breath sample on an “approved screening device” get your reading (which would be totally false)  “over the legal limit” and Bang!! They have one more criminal.

 

 

Before we get into any further discussion we need to look at the definition of “Impaired.”

 

To make worse; to diminish in quantity, value, excellence, or strength; to deteriorate; as, to impair health, character, the mind, value. [1913 Webster]

 

In our understanding if a person is not into his/her senses, doesn’t know what they are doing (like driving on wrong side on freeway), or their visual, mental and physical conditions are poor they should be considered as “Impaired”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the link to the impaired driving rules and regulations from Department of Justice Canada.

 

 

Below is the Second paragraph from that link

 

“A person can be convicted of the criminal offence of impaired driving when there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt of the person’s impairment. Evidence might show, for example, that the person was driving very slowly or too fast, was not driving in a straight line, could not manage simple physical tasks, had slurred speech or bloodshot eyes or had breath that smelled of alcohol. A person who is actually impaired by alcohol can be convicted of impaired driving, whether or not that person’s blood alcohol contents was over the “legal limit”.

 

We think to pull a person over police should observe any of signs marked in RED.  Once they pull you over for anything in red then they can observe the things marked in BLUE.

 

Maybe we are missing something here but we don’t see anything mentioning pulling over people just because they are coming out of parking lot of a bar when they were driving fine.

 

And let’s talk about the part marked in GREEN.  We totally agree with that part which clearly mentions that being impaired has nothing to do with “legal limit”. You can still get charged if you were under the “legal limit” and you were impaired then there is no point of having a “legal limit” especially when you just use the breathalyzers to find out the limit. It should be all about being impaired there should not be any “legal limit” factor. They should focus more on ways to find if a person is impaired rather then if that person is under influence of alcohol.