WELL, WELL, WELL - PROGRESS ON ROAD SAFETY REQUIRES COMPLEX SOLUTIONS

Our government has been busy ramping up its health and safety efforts
in recent months, proposing changes to food and drug safety laws (now
thankfully on pause), and passing new impaired-driving laws.

I'm all for successfully keeping those who still think it's OK to
drive drunk off the road, but I'm not sure the new wider net that has
been cast will be strong enough to stand up in court, big enough to
fully address impaired driving or porous enough to avoid being a
catch-all for things not relevant.

The new law, which goes beyond alcohol impairment to include drug
impairment, has given the Canada Safety Council reason to call it
premature. One of the problems, they say, lies in the scope created
by making drug-impaired driving a criminal offense. Under criminal
law, the accused in Canada are innocent until proven guilty, which
means the law has to be able to hold up in court-something that will
be a bit of a problem with most non-alcohol kinds of impairment,
given that we haven't yet set defensible impairment levels for other drugs.

Not that the growing problem of non-alcohol impaired driving is
something we should ignore. It's just that it's complex and resistant
to simple solutions. For one, millions of us regularly drive on the
effects of legal drugs-sleeping pills, antihistamines, decongestants,
Tylenol with codeine, morphine pain meds, anti-nausea meds and
anti-anxiety meds-many of which regularly show up in the blood of
impaired drivers, and many of which can impair driving as much as alcohol can.

And even more of us regularly drive impaired for reasons that have
little to do with drugs-driving into the wee hours of the night after
a long day counting on caffeine to keep us safe, or with dementia
(more than doubling our risk of a collision), or under
time-pressure-induced haste, or grief-induced distraction, or
screaming-child-induced desperation or a death wish-all of which
clearly impair us, and all of which are complicated, difficult to
measure and harder still to ban.

And there is of course the marijuana issue, the most obvious problem
being that the presence of THC in the blood doesn't equal being
impaired-THC, as is commonly known, lingers long after its effects
have worn off, which means we'll likely see a lot of denial of use,
challenges of charges, court backlogs, expense and little change in
actual numbers of truly impaired drivers on the road. Because some
will delight in looking for THC, there's little doubt about that, all
while the problem of overconfident, angry, testosterone-laden,
cellphone-packing, risk-preferring young adults-arguably a much
bigger problem-continues to be largely ignored.

I'd never advocate driving under any kind of potentially negative
influence-ask my kids, who are very tired of my reminders that it's
not safe to get in at 2 am and then hit the road at 5 am to get to
their destination for 8 am. It's just that impaired driving,
especially any non-alcohol-related kinds of impairment, is a problem
that resists simplistic and heavy-handed solutions.

Effectively addressing road safety will require much more than
stiffer penalties. Suspending licenses for any kind of poor road
behaviour is a fair, inexpensive and reasonably effective tool, but
really effective solutions will involve addressing things like the
aggression and hair-trigger rage of so many on the road (research has
shown profound reductions in aggression with omega-3 and mineral
supplementation of modern on-the-run diets), education about the many
different ways we're tempted to get behind the wheel impaired,
reducing our need for medications of all kinds and making it
respectable and easier to choose not to drive when certain
medications are necessary.

But I'm wasting my time. That's all complicated and expensive, and
we're already hoping that the new tighter laws will do the trick, and
maybe even deter marijuana use as a nice little side effect earning
us some brownie points with the US. Canada, with those currently at
the helm buying into the idea of harsher punishment as the way to
manage everything from choice in natural medicines to addictions and
road safety, appears to be well on its way down the path toward
bogged-down legal systems, fuller jails and good times for lawyers.