Assessment of the Initial Impact of Mandatory Alcohol Screening on Alcohol-involved Driver Fatalities in Canada – Final Report (English, HTML)

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2022-03-04

Mandatory Alcohol Screening (MAS) became law in Canada on December 18, 2018. This amendment to the Criminal Code allowed police to demand a breath test of any driver even in the absence of suspicion or cause. MAS introduced a fundamental change in the approach used by police officers to enforce alcohol-impaired driving laws in Canada. Prior to the introduction of MAS, a police officer could demand that a driver provide a breath sample only if they had reasonable grounds to suspect that the driver had alcohol in their body. Although the threshold for suspicion is not high (the odour of alcohol on a driver’s breath or an admission of drinking is usually sufficient), these are not necessarily the most reliable clues. Police officers vary considerably in their ability to detect the signs and symptoms of alcohol use. Several studies have demonstrated that using typical clues to identify potential drinking drivers (such as the odour of alcohol, bloodshot and/or glassy eyes) can be challenging and can result in many drinking drivers going undetected (Compton, 1985; Wells et al., 1995). The switch from the use of sensory and observational techniques to detect the use of alcohol to a…

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