Private Members Bill:

Impaired Driving — Monetary Fines To Apply To Any And All Vehicle Passengers

My first order of business, should I be successful in my bid to become the new Member of Parliament representing Sydney-Victoria, NS, would be to propose a bill to amend those sections of the Criminal Code (offenses related to conveyances) relating to penalties for impaired driving.

My bill would make all passengers of a vehicle operated by an impaired driver subject to monetary fines matching those applied to the vehicle operator with a minimum fine of $1,000. All individuals directly involved in the decision to let an impaired person drive (be it from alcohol, cannabis and/or prescription drugs) are responsible and held liable.

Peer policing is the basic concept here. Family, friends and community share responsibility when they directly know that someone may be committing a crime and they have the means to prevent such an action. One of the strongest pluses of this potential legislation is its ease of implementation. All existing allowable limits, fines and, where applicable, censure in terms of loss of driving privileges and/or jail time remain intact. A strong global precedent exists for this policy and the resultant reduction in highway fatalities could prove substantial (upwards of 40%).

New means of achieving improved road safety are even more critical in Sydney-Victoria, given the inherent perils of secondary roads which, on balance, are in ill repair, with less street lighting, less enforcement due to low population density with poorer driving conditions due to weather.

Expanding our vast road system, largely via twinning, at considerable expense is not the only way to reduce road fatalities and injury (more than 1/3 of which involve impaired drivers). This proposed law change would be tantamount to a prohibition from riding in vehicles driven by an impaired driver and would, I truly believe, go a long way towards preventing many of the tragedies that occur when someone gets behind the wheel when he or she shouldn’t.

Caleb Gibbons #JCG19