Impact of the 1985 Amendments to the Drinking Driving Section of the Criminal Code of Canada

Daniel R. Mayhew, Douglas J. Beirness and Herb M. Simpson

Traffic Injury Research Foundation, 171 Nepean Street, Suite 200, Ottawa, Ontario Canada K2P 0B4

ABSTRACT

In December 1985, the Department of Justice Canada amended the drinking and driving sections of the Criminal Code of Canada, which included among other changes, an increase in the severity of penalties for impaired driving. This paper describes the results of an evaluation examining whether or not these changes in legislation had an impact on the drinking-driving problem in Canada.

A wide variety of data on drinking and driving behaviours and its consequences - i.e., alcohol-related crashes - were examined for evidence of an impact of the legislative amendments. The data provided evidence that substantial and dramatic reductions in the drinking-driving problem occurred in Canada during the 1980s. Despite these reductions, there was no evidence that could specifically attribute the reductions to the introduction of the 1985 legislative amendments. Several reasons why the legislation did not have an impact included; the public was unaware of the change in legislation; the law was not fully implemented; the law had unexpected and countervailing effects; and, the amendments related primarily to the severity of sanctions and not to the certainty and swiftness of their application.

INTRODUCTION AND PURPOSE

In December, 1985, amendments to the drinking and driving sections of the Criminal Code of Canada were introduced. Two new offences of impaired driving causing bodily harm and impaired driving causing death were added. These offences carried maximum penalties of 10 and 14 years in prison, respectively. At the same time, the minimum fine for impaired driving was increased from $50 to $300 and a mandatory minimum three month court-ordered prohibition from driving was introduced.

This paper describes the key results of a major study to determine whether these amendments produced reductions in the magnitude of the drinking and driving problem in Canada (see Beirness, Simpson and Mayhew 1993).

METHOD

A wide variety of data on drinking and driving behaviour and its consequences -- i.e., alcohol-related crashes -- were examined for evidence of an impact of the legislative amendments. The principal sources of data on the consequence of drinking-driving behaviour included:

The Fatality Data Base (jointly sponsored by Transport Canada and the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators) which contains the results of tests for the presence and amount of alcohol performed on fatally injured drivers in Canada;
The Fatal Accident Reporting System which contains the results of tests for the presence and amount of alcohol performed on fatally injured drivers in the United States. These U.S. data were used for comparison with the Canadian data;
Accident files in Ontario and British Columbia which contain police-reported information on alcohol involvement in casualty collisions;
Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics on the number of persons charged with an impaired driving offence in Canada.

The principal sources of data on the prevalence of drinking and driving behaviour included:

Roadside surveys that involved stopping drivers at predetermined locations and obtaining a sample of breath for analysis of alcohol content. Data from nighttime roadside surveys conducted in Saskatchewan (1981 and 1987), Ontario (1979 and 1986) and Quebec (1981 and 1986) were used in this study.
Population surveys that involved interviews conducted by telephone or in households to obtain information about the prevalence of professed drinking-driving behaviour in the Canadian population. Such surveys were conducted in 1983, 1984, 1985, 1988 and 1990.

A variety of research techniques and designs were also used to assess the impact of the 1985 amendments to the drinking and driving sections of the Criminal Code. These research designs included:

pre-post comparisons to examine measures of drinking and driving before and after the 1985 intervention to determine the extent of change;
regression discontinuity which is a relatively simple time series design used to determine the extent to which the prevailing trend in the drinking-driving problem was altered subsequent to the introduction of the legislative amendments;
interrupted time series design which involves examining the data statistically for the presence of long-term trends and cycles in the data series and determining whether these changed at the time the intervention was introduced; and
equivalent time samples design which involved comparing Canadian data with similar data from the United States where no comparable intervention occurred in 1985 to determine whether significant differences exist between these two countries.

RESULTS

As described above, a wide variety of data on drinking and driving behaviour and its consequences -- e.g., alcohol-related crashes -- were examined using several research designs for evidence of an impact of the legislative amendments. The data provide clear and conclusive evidence that substantial and dramatic reductions in drinking and driving occurred in Canada during the 1980s. All indicators of the problem revealed the same overall downward trend. For example, between 1980 and 1991:

the percent of alcohol-related driver fatalities decreased from 60% to 46%;
the percent of driver fatalities with BACs in excess of 80 mg% decreased from 49% to 39%;
the ratio of drinking to non-drinking driver fatalities decreased from 151 to 87;
the percent of drivers involved in personal injury crashes who had been drinking decreased from 12% to 7%; and,
the number of persons charged with a drinking and driving offence decreased by 29%.

In addition:

the percent of nighttime drivers who had been drinking decreased; and
the prevalence of self-reported driving after drinking at the end of the decade was about half of that reported earlier in the decade.

Despite these substantial reductions in the magnitude of the drinking-driving problem, it was clear that there was no evidence that could specifically attribute these reductions to the introduction of the 1985 legislative amendments. The observed decreases in the indicators of drinking and driving problems were continuous throughout the decade. The downward trend was well-established prior to the amendments. The reductions that occurred after the introduction of the amendments were consistent with a continuation of the pre-existing trend. For example, using times series methods, Figure 1 plots the seasonally adjusted monthly number of driver fatalities with positive BACs from 1980 through 1991 for seven Canadian provinces. A visual inspection of this figure reveals no clearly discernible interruption in the series in or around December 1985 when the drinking and driving legislative amendments were implemented. In addition, statistical modelling of the series with the inclusion of an intervention parameter representing the legislative amendments introduced in December 1985, revealed that the small decrease -- less than two percent -- in drinking driver fatalities in the six years after the legislation was not statistically significant.

Figure 1
Seasonally Adjusted Monthly Number of Driver Fatalities with Positive BACs

The detailed analyses also revealed that the reductions in alcohol-related fatalities were not unique to Canada but were evident in the United States as well. This is illustrated in Figure 2, which plots the ratio of drinking to non-drinking driver fatalities -- the Problem Index -- from 1980 to 1991 for Canada and the United States. As can be seen, nearly identical changes -- i.e., declines -- were observed in Canada and the United States. This pattern of results suggests that it is unlikely that initiatives unique to Canada were responsible for the decline -- improvements in drinking-driving problems in Canada were part of a more general trend that affected drinking and driving behaviour throughout North America.

Figure 2
The Problem Index

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

As a result of this investigation, it was concluded that the 1985 legislative amendments in and of themselves had no significant effect on drinking-driving problems in Canada. In reviewing the evidence, it became apparent that there were several reasons why the legislation did not have an impact and these are described briefly below.

The public was not aware of the legislative changes. The success of the legal approach to discourage people from driving after drinking depends upon public awareness of the laws. Drivers cannot be deterred by the threat of sanctions if they don't know such sanctions exist. The reason the 1985 amendments to the drinking and driving sections of the Criminal Code did not have a measurable impact was, in part, due to limited public awareness of the law (see: Beirness, Simpson and Mayhew 1993; and Simpson, Mayhew and Beirness 1992).

The law was not fully implemented. If for various reasons the provisions of the law were not fully implemented by the police and/or the courts, the extent of any reductions in the drinking-driving problem would undoubtedly be lower than those that might have been observed had the law been implemented as intended.

And, there is some evidence from a previous report on the 1985 amendments to the drinking and driving sections of the Criminal Code (Moyer 1992) that there were indeed difficulties experienced in the implementation of the amendments -- e.g., following the legislative amendments relatively few drivers were charged with impaired operation causing death or bodily harm; once charged with one of these more serious offences it is estimated that 20-40 percent of offenders are actually convicted of a lesser offence of impaired operation (Moyer 1992).

The law had unexpected and countervailing effects. It is sometimes difficult to anticipate how the general public, the police and the courts might react to a change in legislation. If an unexpected effect undermines or subverts the intent of the law, it can serve to reduce any impact that the law might have produced. And, recent findings (Beirness, Simpson and Mayhew 1992; Moyer 1992) suggest that the law change had unexpected and countervailing effects. For example, there is evidence that short-term administrative roadside prohibitions (e.g., for 12 or 24 hours) are being used in lieu of impaired driving charges under the Criminal Code. Since 1986 in British Columbia, the number of such prohibitions has increased by 27% -- by contrast, the number of charges for impaired driving has decreased by 23%. If police officers are issuing more 24-hour prohibitions instead of laying formal impaired driving charges, offenders never experience the effects of the more severe sanctions introduced as part of the legislative amendments, which could seriously undermine the impact of the legislative amendments.

Drinking and driving cannot be affected by legal changes that emphasize severity of sanctions over swiftness and certainty. It has been argued by some (e.g., Ross 1992) that legal measures are an inefficient means for effecting social change, particularly if the consequences (punitive measures) emphasize severity over swiftness and certainty. And, given that the 1985 amendments emphasize severity rather than certainty or swiftness, some would contend that it is unrealistic to expect any discernible impact on drinking driving behaviour.

REFERENCES

Beirness, D.J., Simpson, H.M. and Mayhew, D.R. (1992). Impaired Driving: Future Directions for Counterattack. Victoria, British Columbia: Motor Vehicle Branch, Department of Transportation.

Beirness, D.J., Simpson, H.M. and Mayhew, D.R. (1993). Assessment of the Impact of the 1985 Amendments to the Drinking and Driving Section of the Criminal Code of Canada. Ottawa, Ontario: Research and Statistics Directorate, Department of Justice.

Moyer, S. (1992). The Implementation of the 1985 Amendments to the Drinking and Driving Section of the Criminal Code. Ottawa, Ontario: Department of Justice.

Ross, H.L. (1992). Confronting Drunk Driving: Social Policy for Saving Lives. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.

Simpson, H.M., Mayhew, D.R., and Beirness, D.J. (1992). National Survey on Drinking and Driving. Ottawa, Ontario: Health and Welfare Canada.