The government of British Columbia says it is looking at options to get tougher on drivers involved in fatal crashes after the premier spoke to the family of a 12-year-old killed on Vancouver Island this past summer.
Xavier Rasul-Jankovics was rollerblading outside his home along a rural road in the Cowichan Valley on Aug. 25 when he was struck and killed by a vehicle.
In a release, RCMP Cpl. Alex Bérubé said speed “played an important factor” in the incident, with the 17-year-old driver of the Honda Civic losing control of the vehicle.
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Kyla Lee, a B.C. lawyer who focuses on driving law, said it may be difficult for the province to enact the changes being proposed.The issue, she said, is that it is difficult to immediately present clear evidence that someone was speeding or driving dangerously. As a result, an immediate driving suspension for anyone based on suspicion, rather than evidence, could be a violation of constitutional rights.
“Innocent people may end up losing their licences … until such a time that it can be determined that they didn’t actually do anything wrong,” Lee said.
That stands in contrast, she said, to instances where a person’s licence can be quickly suspended for driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, because police can easily conduct tests to prove with little doubt that they were inebriated.
“Those are relatively objective,” she said.
Speeding or dangerous driving, though, is not as easily proven.
“There’s a lot of investigative steps,” she said, including a mechanical inspection of the vehicle, incident re-enactment, and looking for witnesses and video evidence.
