This past weekend, Ontario introduced the toughest driving restrictions in the country for teen drivers, by enacting a zero-tolerance policy for drinking and driving.
It’s about time.
After all, there hasn’t been a summer in recent memory where teenagers have been victim to horrendous car accidents caused by drinking and driving.
Even in Elmira, many of the names that grace our Fountain of Memories are of deaths that should not have happened, because young drivers took chances with their lives.
But the fact is, every time anyone gets behind the wheel after having a few drinks, lives are in danger.
We question a restriction that specifically targets teens, when adult drivers — many of whom should know better — get behind the wheel, each and every day, after drinking.
Every week, we see police report items related to this. Thankfully, the vast majority of these reports are about those who have been caught drinking and driving, not about those who caused tragic car accidents as a result.
And yet, these accidents are still far too common.
According to Mothers Against Drunk Driving Canada, 1,239 people were killed in impaired driving accidents in 2007. If that statistic were to include drinking and driving on our waterways, we would have to include 47 more fatalities from accidents that were alcohol related.
That is nearly 1,300 families Canada-wide that were directly affected by deaths due to alcohol-impaired drivers. If we add in the 210,006 injuries, we know that there are hundreds of thousands of families, friends and colleagues that are adversely impacted by drinking and driving.
While provincial legislation is rightly creating a policy of no acceptable level of drinking and driving in teens, it does not go far enough.
Adults should be subject to the same restrictions, if only because alcohol, even when consumed in small quantities, impairs judgment and reaction time.
There is really no safe amount of alcohol to consume before getting behind the wheel, because there are so many factors that can affect the level of impairment — whether you have eaten recently, if you are already tired, or even how quickly you consume your drinks.
The fact that we are relying on our own judgment, which is impaired by alcohol, to determine whether we are safe to drive means that it is very easy to make a fatal, irrevocable mistake.
Why not make it simply illegal to drink and drive, for everyone?  Then, at least, we are ensuring that the decision is not ours to make.
We’d rather see more drivers having to “sleep it off”, get a cab, take a bus or walk home than even one more alcohol-related death on our roads.
Wouldn’t you?