With legislation pending to drop the Alberta impaired level from .07 to .05 – not official yet but it appears imminent, somebody has to speak up for the socially responsible drinker.
Dropping the impairment critical threshhold to .05, as far as I’m aware, means no second glass of wine or beer if you intend to drive after attending any social occasion.
Now this is heresy and entirely unacceptable to say, but I will say it. The socially responsible drinker can have two glasses of wine, or two bottles of beer, and safely drive home.
When innocent victims are killed by drunk drivers, the culprits are not individuals with .07 or less of alcohol in their bodies.
The culprits are usually individuals, I would suggest, who have been on massive drinking binges, who are driving at two to three times over the .07 level, who are oblivious to social responsibility.
They are usually young men. And too often, they are driving recklessly, in the wee hours of the morning. And too often, it appears, in rural areas.
I’m sorry, the hypocrisy of all this troubles me.
You lawmakers who will pass this bill … does this mean from now on, for the rest of your lives, you will never order a bottle of wine to go with your dinner for two?
At all those banquets you attend, where the waiters are happy to refill your wine glass as soon as it’s half-full … will you turn your glass upside down after one drink?
Actually, no, you’ll have to refuse ALL wine because you already had a pre-dinner glass of champagne at the reception.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having two drinks at a cocktail party, at a pub after work with colleagues. The socially responsible drinker is able to drive home after two drinks, as we as a society have agreed with, up to this point, by pegging the point of impairment at .07.
To drop that level to .05 is not only to create a world of hypocrites, because, again, it will be widely ignored by socially responsible individuals who like TWO glasses of wine with their dinner, or who enjoy a drink OR TWO when they socialize with their friends or colleagues before they drive home … driving more carefully because they are aware they’ve had two glasses of wine or two bottles of beer.
I have to agree with you Mr. Hicks. This redundant proposed provincial legislation merely points out that you, as a responsible drinker, cannot be trusted to be responsible. If you think the current laws are not tough enough, just ask someone who has recently been convicted of impaired operation of a motor vehicle. You will always have the individuals who will cry bloody murder, but if someone is killed due to an operators stupidity, and that operator is sober, it is somehow categorized as an “accident”, and therefore acceptable collateral damage in the eyes of the law and society in general. I’ve got news for you Premier Redford……. you can’t fix stupid! Premier Redford, if a law was created to target stupid people, even if you were just a little shy of full blown stupid, you would in fact be punished for proposing such asinine legislation and have your vehicle impounded for say three days to allow for common sense to prevail!
Just as the Long-Gun Registry was designed to punish all those who DIDN’T shoot those women in Montreal, Alberta is soon to bolster its’ “Drunk-Driving Law” with an adjunct “Not-Drunk Driving Law”. Then, in the years to follow, they can hold up the list of “not-drunks” punished and bleat that they “at least did SOMETHING”…..
Bollocks to them, I say.
I believe it’s .08
The rest, I agree with you.
Robert Hogg
#31 10130 – 159 St.
Edmonton, Alberta
T5P 2Z9
780-489-1088