[Acuracura]

I agree first mistake is on the driver making the decision to drive after drinking.

I really think the new IRP (Immediate Roadside Prohibitions) help to alleviate this problem. Police Officers are way more likely to use an ASD now when engaging in any type of alcohol driving investigation rathe than simply handing out 24hr Prohibitions.

In my mind, 24hr Prohibitions are the lazy Police Officers way of dealing with the problem. Obviously there's certain criteria to meet before handing out a 24hr Prohibition ie grounds to believe the driver's ability to drive is affected by alcohol (or drugs). Now in the old days (pre IRP time), I think Police Officers (especially VPD) would just hand out 24hr Prohibitions rather than going Criminal Code route. It didn't matter if you were shit faced, the cop would just give you a 24hr and be done with it. They only way VPD would charge your criminally was if there was a collision.

Police aren't as "afraid" to use the ASD now with the IRP. Basically, the cop has a pretty good idea if the driver is going to blow a fail or not. Before the IRP, if the guy blows a fail you were committed to doing a criminal code investigation. Now with the IRP, they can avoid the lengthy work of a Criminal Code investigation which is easily 20 hrs of work.

There are reasons why the 24hrs is still used. Lucky for us, we're in the big city. An ASD is only 5 minutes away. I'm sure in smaller towns where there's only maybe 2 Officers working at a time, they may not be able to afford an ASD, no one is trained to use an ASD or they simply can not have an ASD delivered in a reasonable amount of time to satisfy the demand without infringing on citizen's rights. If the officer is unable to use the ASD but there is obviously some concern to allowing the driver to drive...well the cop really has nothing else but to go with the 24 Hr prohib. Also if it is drug related rather than alcohol you have to go with a 24hr, unless they're so wrecked you can go criminal code.

Think of it this way, the cop already has some grounds that you driving is questionable. Using the ASD just gives more evidence to the case.

For SIMNUT, the procedure that Zulu pointed out is pretty standard. I can see how you have issues with the way things are but in reality I would think it's very rare for a Novice driver to get a 24hr suspension without an ASD and then challenge it and blow under. For that kind of symptomology I would suspect for that to happen, the driver only had a little bit to drink (under 0.049) and also consumed some drugs making him seem more messed up than the ASD shows.