What is Drunk Driving?
- Driving under the influence is the act of driving a motor vehicle with a blood level of alcohol in excess of a legal limit. Similar regulations cover driving or operating certain types of machinery while affected by drinking alcohol or taking other drugs. This is a criminal offence in most countries. Convictions do not necessarily involve actual driving of the vehicle.
- In most jurisdictions a measurement such as a blood alcohol content in excess of a defined level, such as 0.05% or 0.08% defines the offense, with no need to prove impairment or being under the influence of alcohol.
Blood Alcohol Content (BAC)
- Blood alcohol content (BAC), also called blood alcohol concentration, blood ethanol concentration, or blood alcohol level is most commonly used as a metric of alcohol intoxication for legal or medical purposes.
- Blood alcohol content is usually expressed as percentage of alcohol in the blood. For instance, a BAC of 0.10 means that 0.10% (one tenth of one percent) of a person's blood, by volume, is alcohol.
- In Canada, it is illegal to any amount of alcohol in your blood if you're a new driver undergoing graduated licensing in Ontario, Quebec, Northwest Territories, Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; drivers under the age of 22 in Ontario.
Punishments
The minimum punishments for impaired driving and driving over 0.08% are:
- For the first offence: $1,000 fine, 1-year driving prohibition.
- For the second offence: 30 days jail, 2-year driving prohibition.
- For the third or subsequent offence: 120 days jail, 3-year driving prohibition.
- An ignition interlock device is a mechanism, like a breathalyzer, installed on a vehicle's dashboard. Before the vehicle can be started, the driver first must exhale into the device; if the resultant breath-alcohol concentration analyzed result is greater than 0.02%, the device prevents the vehicle to start.