New Laws in Ontario
http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/safety/impaired/breaklaw/breaklaw.htm#consequences
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New speeding laws as well if your 50klms over your licence is suspended for 90 days & your car impounded
for a week at $250. a tow & $75 per day storage(even if its a rental).........Fines $2000. to $10.000
http://www.thestar.com/News/Ontario/article/269825
About Time They cracked down!!!

What's with all of the shocked smileys?  This is a great thing and absolutely what should happen to drunk drivers!  They should probably also have signs stapled to their foreheads stating "I am an a**hole and want to commit vehicular manslaughter"!

Have some eye-rolling:  ::)

The suspension periods and fines aren't enough if you ask me.  I live in Ontario, and I've seen my fair share of crazy and dangerous drivers everyday

I know a guy who had his car impounded because he got caught going over 150k on the Hwy401 (max speed limit 100k).  It don't know how much it cost him in fines and such, but I know he wasn't too happy about it lol

I think this tougher laws came from too many cottage week-end idiots on the 400 hwy.
OPP are tired of scraping them off the road!Personally I think if your caught drinking & driving your car should be "Impounded" for sale & licence be gone for ever!!!!
Under the newer street racing laws the car can be taken away & CRUSHED!
Congrats your the proud owner of a Borg cube! ;D

I know a guy who had his car impounded because he got caught going over 150k on the Hwy401 (max speed limit 100k).  It don't know how much it cost him in fines and such, but I know he wasn't too happy about it lol


Meh, I got no problem with the law tearing drunk drivers a new one, but I think "street racing" charges should be reserved for, you know, people who are actually trying to race on the street. 

150kph is only around 90 mph.  I've driven in Ontario and in California, and at the time the average speed on some stretches of the 401 was around 130kph (80 mph), and the road was much better maintained than California's I-5, I-80, and US 101, long stretches of which feature similar speeds.  If I'm doing 80mph, and I slide over into the slow lane to let some guy coming up behind me glides by at 90 mph, we're both guilty of speeding, but can anyone seriously call that racing?

Since intent can't be proven (without pulling both of us over, how can the State prove that we were racing each other instead of merely passing each other), let's compromise.  If you're driving more than 50 kph (30 mph) over the limit, and you're swerving around other traffic, you don't get charged with something bogus like "street racing", you get charged with aggressive driving, and if you hit someone, you get a bonus charge of criminal negligence. 

Partner this with a German-style enforcement of "Keep right except to pass".  In a 65 zone, it shouldn't matter whether I'm doing 66 or 80; if the guy doing 90 feels he has to pass me on the right, he gets charged with speeding and aggressive driving, and I get charged with speeding and obstructing the flow of traffic. 

The guy doing 90+ when (apart from the police car on the side of the road) there's not a car within a mile of him?  Charge him money, but draw the line at asset seizure. 

But speeding fines aren't about safety, they're about money.  If it were about safety, we'd use some money into driver training, and we'd have fewer left-lane hogs trying to play traffic cop, fewer tailgaters going ballistic behind them, and fewer poor Chucks like me who religiously pull over for faster traffic when it's safe to do so, but who also refuse to tailgate the left-lane hog who's forming the rolling roadblock in the first place.

Back to the original point of the thread, however... drunk drivers?  Fark MADD and their attempts to reintroduce prohibition, but fark drunk drivers just as hard.  Over 0.08?  Hang 'em high.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_20_96/ai_57041215

although i would be the last person to advocate defending drunken driving, i get nervous whenever i see a consensus opinion on just about anything involving the advocacy of ruthless or disproportionate punishment. i wonder how many people who've posted about this have secretly driven after having one too many at some point in their lives? and should we fine people $10,000 for driving while drowsy or talking on cell phones, which are roughly as dangerous?

there's something moralizing and trendy about the disproportionate hatred for drunk drivers, i think there's some scapegoating involved, frankly. plus i think people can advocate anything short of the death penalty for anyone who drives on three beers, and never expect that anyone will dare to disagree.

okay. flame me now.

okay. flame me now.


Naw, not really.  0.08 is a pretty low limit.  But if you're going to set a numeric limit, you've gotta set it low enough that even though "experienced drinkers" (read: people who are halfway to becoming alcoholics because they've developed a tolerance for alcohol) are barely feeling a buzz, the first-time drinker would be unsafe.

And if you're not going to have a numeric limit at all, you're relying on the subjective opinion of the cops, which is a recipe for failure if there ever was one.

To draw a speeding anaology:  we don't have the millions of dollars it would cost us to adjudicate every speeding case as a function of driver experience and vehicle capability/condition.  Thus, at 56 mph, the 16-year-old in the beat-up 1973 VW microbus is as guilty of speeding as the 50something yuppie in the 2007 Ferrari doing 90. 

So it is with the booze -- doesn't matter if you're Colonel Tigh from Battlestar Galactica, whose idea of sober is around 0.08, or you're a first-time drinker celebrating your 21st birthday with a 4-beer-bender, and you're falling-down drunk at 0.08.  If you drive at those levels, you're guilty of DUI. Turn in your keys.

Naw, not really.  0.08 is a pretty low limit.  But if you're going to set a numeric limit, you've gotta set it low enough that even though "experienced drinkers" (read: people who are halfway to becoming alcoholics because they've developed a tolerance for alcohol) are barely feeling a buzz, the first-time drinker would be unsafe.

And if you're not going to have a numeric limit at all, you're relying on the subjective opinion of the cops, which is a recipe for failure if there ever was one.

To draw a speeding anaology:  we don't have the millions of dollars it would cost us to adjudicate every speeding case as a function of driver experience and vehicle capability/condition.  Thus, at 56 mph, the 16-year-old in the beat-up 1973 VW microbus is as guilty of speeding as the 50something yuppie in the 2007 Ferrari doing 90. 

So it is with the booze -- doesn't matter if you're Colonel Tigh from Battlestar Galactica, whose idea of sober is around 0.08, or you're a first-time drinker celebrating your 21st birthday with a 4-beer-bender, and you're falling-down drunk at 0.08.  If you drive at those levels, you're guilty of DUI. Turn in your keys.
i loled at the colonel tigh line.

i'm surprised you, as someone i perceive to be a libertarian, wouldn't mention the idea that the whole drunk driving crackdown fad is probably at least in part a gambit to increase government control over the population and make people accept the feeling of being perpetually policed and monitored. whenever there's a frenzy to over-persecute an offense that probably a third of the country's population has committed at some point in their lives, i smell a rat. reminds me of the draconian marijuana crackdown.

the idea that the whole drunk driving crackdown fad is probably at least in part a gambit to increase government control over the population and make people accept the feeling of being perpetually policed and monitored.


Oh, it is, but that's beside the point. :)

For what it's worth, I oppose DUI checkpoints.  But if a guy's weaving all over the road, that's reasonable suspicion that the guy's drunk, and he's fair game.  My right to swing my fist ends at someone else's face, and my right to swerve my wheels ends when I cross a lane marker, fail to signal a turn, and so on.

The philosophical distinction is that with a checkpoint, there's no reason to believe any crime has been committed, and yet civilians lawfully going about their own business are inconvenienced.  I'll be the first to say that "failure to maintain lane position" isn't much of an infraction, but it's infinitely stronger than no grounds whatsoever to investigate whether a driver is sleepy, drunk, impaired by illegal drugs, impaired by prescription medications, having mechanical difficulties, or was merely swerving to avoid a pothole or some roadkill. 

Oh, it is, but that's beside the point. :)

For what it's worth, I oppose DUI checkpoints.  But if a guy's weaving all over the road, that's reasonable suspicion that the guy's drunk, and he's fair game.  My right to swing my fist ends at someone else's face, and my right to swerve my wheels ends when I cross a lane marker, fail to signal a turn, and so on.

The philosophical distinction is that with a checkpoint, there's no reason to believe any crime has been committed, and yet civilians lawfully going about their own business are inconvenienced.  I'll be the first to say that "failure to maintain lane position" isn't much of an infraction, but it's infinitely stronger than no grounds whatsoever to investigate whether a driver is sleepy, drunk, impaired by illegal drugs, impaired by prescription medications, having mechanical difficulties, or was merely swerving to avoid a pothole or some roadkill. 


Heh.  The checkpoints are useless where I used to live in California.  They would broadcast on the news where they were going to be held. ;D

this was linked in my undernews update the other day as an article meant to make us accept checkpoints, which to my mind are a total fourth amendment violation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/27/AR2008072701992_pf.html

Checkpoints: They Make You Stop and Think

By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 28, 2008; C01



Checkpoints stand as more than physical barriers against violence. They separate the wanted from the unwanted. They are gateposts meant to divide the good from the bad, to keep chaos away from calm.

They are forbidding guardhouses with searing lights, dogs and people in uniforms. They create assurance in a society that wants certainty. Sometimes, they succeed. In the District's violence-torn Trinidad neighborhood, the latest checkpoints have provided nine sweet days of peace.

"Since the checkpoints were established on July 19, no shootings have occurred in the Trinidad area," D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said in a statement last week, announcing the extension of the checkpoints until tomorrow. The extension "sends a clear message my officers will saturate the Trinidad neighborhood to keep the residents there safe and ultimately find out those responsible for the violent crime in the area last weekend."