PRIVACY INVADED

The automobile-insurance board here in Quebec says it wants to know
what sort of link exists between the use of drugs and highway
accidents. It's a fair question, but the board has devised a strange
way to find the answer.

At different points across Quebec this month, police officers are
using hand signals to ask randomly selected motorists to pull over.
The board's representatives, usually nursing students, then ask the
drivers whether they would care to volunteer a saliva or urine sample
for the purpose of detecting drugs or - though it's not the study's
prime focus - alcohol. If the motorists decline, they are free to
drive off. If they comply and test results later show them to be under
the influence of drugs or alcohol, they face no penalties.

It may be for lawyers to thrash out whether the act of stopping people
for this purpose violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms'
guarantees against unreasonable search and detention. Legalities
aside, however, this request for citizens' bodily fluids clearly does
violate the normal understanding of privacy.

Even if giving over the substances is voluntary, there is implicit
pressure to comply. Police officers' presence assures that. And, quite
aside from the inconvenience of going into a cabin to produce a urine
sample, the exercise may impose stress on some people. Although board
officials say the participants' vehicle license will not be noted, who
knows for sure?

It's also worth asking if the study is serious in the first place. Its
sampling of drivers is hardly scientific: first, the police will
select those whom they wave over; and second, not all people who are
thus chosen will agree to be tested. Indeed, in a pilot project last
fall, 74 per cent of those stopped refused to give a urine sample,
which is far more reliable than saliva for drug-testing purposes.

The study has another phase that seems more sensible, the taking of
blood samples from drivers who have been killed in accidents. Although
such tests have been done in the past for alcohol in the bloodstream,
this will be the first time in Quebec they will have been carried out
for drugs. The results should be very reliable.

And the exercise will affect no living person's privacy.