Quote:
Originally Posted by Maritime Q-Scout
I'm curious on one issue with this. I know if you have keys in your possession in the car you can get charged. But what if you put the keys in the trunk? They're not on you, nor in your direct possession. Any police officers/lawyers know the answer to that?
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I'm kinda in a hurry here but hopefully I can clear up a couple of issues:
1) The impaired driving charge is actually composed on 2 criminal code offiences- impaired driving (based on an officers observations of your indictia of impairment) and driving while over .08 (pretty self-explanatory). You are charged with both if you blow over .08 (its actually .1 as results are truncated and there is a margin of error of +/- .1). You can however be charged with impaired driving based soley on driving evidence and the officers observations of your indictia even if you blow under .08.
2) An included offence is care and control which factors in drunks sitting in there car waiting for there drunk to wear off. There is a tonne of caselaw on this is I won't get into the details. In essence, if you have to ability to put the car in motion you CAN be charged.
3) Once an officer has made contact with you, you become his responsibility. It would be pretty trusting to allow someone to sit in their car to sober up knowing that people make some pretty poor decisions when it comes to their degree of sobriety. I would suggest that it probably isn't worth their career, etc, etc, etc, hen it comes to trusting some drunk guy sitting behind the wheel of his car promising he won't drive home.
4) Alberta has provincial legislation allowing police to suspend drivers for 24 hours based only a suspicion that alcohol (or drug) has been consumed. So, one drink, half a drink, 3 drinks whatever, and an officers just doesn't think he has the necessary grounds to arrest you, you can sill get a 24 hour suspension.