Police busy during weekend conducting several impaired driving investigations
By Boundary Sentinel
In a media release Monday, the Grand Forks RCMP said that in less than 24 hours, between 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 30 to 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, October 31, Grand Forks officers conducted three impaired driving investigations.
RCMP said the first investigation started Saturday at 8:30 p.m. when Mounties were advised of a possible impaired driver.
Officers began making patrols and eventually located the vehicle on North Fork Road before locating a 48-year-old man from Grand Forks. The driver was investigated for impaired driving and given an Immediate Roadside Prohibition (IRP) which resulted in a 90-day suspension of his driver’s license and a 30 day impound of his vehicle.
RCMP said a few hours later, just after midnight on October 31, officers were called to a motor vehicle accident on the 3400 block of Carson Road, where a vehicle had driven off the road.
RCMP said officers attended and quickly determined that the driver was impaired by alcohol.
RCMP said the driver, a 59-year-old woman from Grand Forks was taken to Boundary Hospital with non life threatening injuries. Officers performed a blood demand and will await the results before presenting a report to the BC Prosecutions Services for charge approval.
Finally, on October 31 at 6:30 p.m., officers were once again called to a motor vehicle accident on Highway 3 and Thompson Road in Christina Lake, where a vehicle had driven into the ditch.
RCMP said a 70-year-old man from Christina Lake was investigated for impaired driving and he received a 90-day suspension of his license and had his vehicle impounded for 30 days.
Its disconcerting the amount of people that still feel they can drink alcohol and still get behind the wheel of a vehicle, says Grand Forks RCMP Detachment Commander Sergeant Darryl Peppler. Two of the three these three incidents involved accidents where the driver could have severely hurt themselves or someone else or have done something worse.
Impaired Driving Fines
Immediate Roadside Prohibition (IRP) is a provincial legislation that allows police officers to quickly and effectively investigate Impaired Driving matters. With an IRP, the officer can establish roadside that the driver has over 100 mg% of alcohol in their system (legal limit is 80 mg%) and from there issue a 90-day suspension of their driver’s license and have their vehicle impounded for 30 days.
This is much quicker than the traditional Criminal Code Impaired Driving where a driver is brought back to the Detachment where samples of breath are collected, and then the driver is released for a court date later on.
With an IRP, the driver does avoid having to go to Court and does avoid a criminal record, but the sanctions are quite severe. Following losing your license for 90 days, a driver can then apply for their license back, meaning that there are fines to pay, a course that must be taken and completed, and an interlock ignition system installed in your vehicle, all of which takes money and time to complete.
