Driving High

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There’s a frightening trend developing on the roads. BCAA Traffic Safety Foundation Executive Director Alan Lamb explains.

Alan Lamb: The incidents of impaired driving continue to increase and unfortunately the incidents of drugs and driving is on the increase. In fact, we have more people now who have drugs in their system  than alcohol in their system. A full 16 to 17 percent of all drivers on our roads in the evening have either drugs or alcohol in their system, which is a very, very high rate.

It’s a significant concern for all of us – and should be. With marijuana and cocaine being the leading drugs that are in the systems of some of these drivers, it’s something that we have to pay great attention to.

On the other side of that, we have the highest number of police officers in Canada that have been trained as drug recognition experts. So we all know very well that if we’re out driving and have had too much to alcohol to drink, then we can be detected by that and have police officers take us into their offices. Now we have over 1,000 police officers in the province that have been trained to look for impairment by a drug other than alcohol. So the police are aware of it, we are aware of it and what we have to do is simply increase the extent of enforcement to make sure that drug impaired drivers are taken off the road.
 

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