Month: September 2018

This week on the Driving Law Podcast, I speak with Scott Wonder. He is a fantastic DUI lawyer in Washington state, with particular expertise in the consequences of any administrative or criminal impaired driving incident on pilot licenses. Then, Paul Doroshenko and I discuss more updates to the Drager DrugTest 5000 situation as well as an app that is supposed to detect drug impaired driving. Is this app admissible in court? We dispel some myths that have been in the media lately.

Listen on SoundCloud, or subscribe on iTunes, or tune in on PlayerFM.

The next step in the Drug Recognition Evaluation is to check the subject’s body for muscle tone. The rationale behind this is that some drugs will make your muscles rigid and some will make them flaccid, and that will help the DRE officer determine the class or category of drug that a person has taken.

In Canada, this step is combined with the next of the twelve steps, which is to take the subject’s pulse and check for injection sites. However, as we are going by the twelve steps individually, I will deal with that next week.

This week’s roundup of weird and wacky legal cases starts out grim, but I promise we end on a high note. First, we look at why on earth a person would want to rob themselves. Next, we delve into a woman facing twelve criminal charges for practicing veterinary medicine without a license. Finally, we examine a funny case about an impaired driving charge on an electric scooter and look at a few other instances in which a person might find themselves on the wrong side of a drunk driving law.

It’s sure to be interesting, albeit a little sad at the beginning.

It’s about time we rethink how traffic fine revenue is shared in BC. This funding is shared between various municipalities around the province, with the government acting as arbiter of who gets some and how much. Municipalities ultimately don’t have much say on how big their slice of traffic revenue will be, or even if they get any in the first place. They can argue, they can appeal, but at the end of the day, the provincial government tells them how much they are going to receive. Municipalities lack bargaining chips. All they can do is shut up and take the money. Or not take the money, as is the case for many small towns.

In this week’s episode of the Driving Law podcast, I speak with Paul Doroshenko of Acumen Law Corporation about a few issues we have previously covered. We start with an update on red light speed cameras in British Columbia, as well as a discussion of the fallout surrounding Edmonton’s use of noise detection cameras and devices. Then, we recap Talk Like a Pirate Day. Finally, Paul and I talk about Bill C-75, which we had discussed in Episode 1.

You can follow us on iTunes, PlayerFM, or on SoundCloud.

As I mentioned in an earlier post about the Drug Recognition Evaluation Program, there are a series of steps related to assessing an individual’s eyes. As we’ve already seen, the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus and the Vertical Gaze Nystagmus tests are two such examinations, and each with their own set of flaws and reliability concerns. But there is more than meets the eye to the eye examinations in the DRE.

The next stage involves the assessment of the behaviour of a person’s pupils in response to various lighting conditions. I find this to be one of the more problematic aspects of the test, for reasons that will become clear in this post and in the coming weeks. So without further ado, here’s what happens when you and the officer go into a dark room together.

This week on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays, a hodgepodge of assorted absurdities. Beginning with the case of a woman who foreshadowed her own crimes. Then, a costumed man is kicked off a plane. And he’s not even from Florida! Finally, we analyze the case of a very honest man who made a series of very bad decisions that you should never ever repeat.

All that and more! (okay, not more) on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays.

This week on the Driving Law Podcast, I speak with the famed and outspoken cannabis activist, Dana Larsen. We begin our discussion about cannabis impaired driving laws and the science behind them. Then, we move into the area of Dana’s own concerns approaching the issue. But we also have a more wide-ranging discussion about other issues surrounding legalization generally.

You can listen to our very interesting discussion on SoundCloud or PlayerFM. And like always, you can subscribe on iTunes so you never miss an episode.