This is very commonly known information yet every year many people are still arrested, killed or even worse kill other people when drinking and driving. How can this be with all the intuitive taken by police to get drunk drivers off the road? It is because the laws and penalties are to lenient and are not enough to prevent intoxicated people from driving a vehicle. Even though we have the technology to prevent impaired drivers from starting there car, it is not standard in any vehicle. Drinking and driving has become part of are society and some people ignore it rather then prevent it. Finally the penalties need to become stronger to further prevent people from driving drunk. When a person is intoxicated they may make wrong decisions, however there needs to be measures in place to further deter people from drinking and driving.
Operation of a vehicle while intoxicated is covered under the Criminal Code part 253 which states, "Every one commits an offense who operates a motor vehicle or vessel or operates or assists in the operation of an aircraft or of railway equipment or has the care or control of a motor vehicle, vessel, aircraft or railway equipment, whether it is in motion or not, while the person's ability to operate the vehicle, vessel, aircraft or railway equipment is impaired by alcohol or a drug; or having consumed alcohol in such a quantity that the concentration in the person's blood exceeds eighty milligrams of alcohol in one hundred millilitres of blood.1. Furthermore, the basic definition of impaired driving is quite broad and there are many different punishments that go along with this law. .
Impaired driving takes many lives every year. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)2 states that in Canada in 2007 there were 3045 deaths from motor vehicle crashes. Of those 3045 deaths 1239 of those were caused by impaired drivers. This means that forty one percent of all motor vehicle fatalities in Canada are caused by impaired drivers.