Every once in awhile you come across something that you think no one else will ever experience as a police officer, one of those "well doesn't that beat all" stories. Of course, you'd be wrong. But it still makes a good story.
Around 2:00 am one morning I was driving down the highway near a small Saskatchewan town. Taillights in the distance made me accelerate to catch up. I didn't need to. The older pickup truck was only doing about 40 kms an hour and was wandering in its lane. I followed a short distance and then pulled the truck over. It took longer than normal to stop, and when it did it was in the middle of the lane.
Now these are all pretty classic driving evidence for impaired driving, but when I walked up to the car I was surprised to see that although the four or five passengers were drunk, the driver was stone cold sober. She was however only about 10 or 11 years old. Her father, seated beside her in the truck, had used her as a "designated driver". She had sat outside the bar in the truck while her parents and some friends drank, her job was to drive them home afterwards.
Now there are a couple of ways of handling this, the classic one would be to contact Social Services and try and get some intervention done on the child's behalf. I took a different tack. I charged the father with impaired care and control, towed the vehicle, drove the drunks home and took the girl to a sober relative.
But the father wasn't driving. How could I charge him? The law recognizes that you might not find an impaired driver in the act of driving. It has a section in the impaired/over .08 laws commonly referred to as Care and Control. Essentially if you have control over the vehicle, and could put it in motion, or control its motion, and you're impaired… you can be charged with impaired care and control of a vehicle. Its classic use is when you find someone passed out behind the wheel, the vehicle running, or the keys in the ignition. Other times would be a drunk stuck in the ditch in his vehicle.
But in this case the father had the control over what his daughter was doing, the driving, seated right beside her, he instructed her, he in essence controlled the vehicle through her. She, being a child, wouldn't be able to resist this person in authority. He had control of the vehicle through his control of her. So I charged him, as far as I know, the only person charged with this manner of care and control.
He was convicted.
Comments
4 responses
Good lord. Well done. Imagine what might have happened.
I think the first time that I was up until 2:00 am was when I was 15. The first time I drove a car at 2:00 am was likely a few years later. Full of drunks – waaaaay later.
Mungo
Interesting tale. I’ve certainly never heard of anything like this before although it is good to know the law covers these kind of strange situations.
I have family in the Perth area so I had to chuckle at the CBC story even though….
Well that’s a new one on me. Forcing an under age child who doesn’t even having a driver’s license to chauffeur a drunk adult around seems like “reckless parenting,” indeed. How sad.
The consequences are pretty frightening Mungo.
I don’t think that the law specifically covers these situations. Luckily the court sided with my application of the law Darcy.
I’m sure it seemed like a legitimate answer to the problem of avoiding driving home drunk to them. Obviously they didn’t allow logic to enter into the decision process. There was an “interesting” comment (I’ve got to stop reading those) on the CBC story of the similar incident, essentially stating that impaired driving laws are so draconian that they forced the mother to chose between driving drunk or getting her 9 year old to drive for her. Apparently there were no other options.