This week on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays: Somebody Else’s Car
Last week we looked at surveillance technology getting things wrong. This week it mostly gets things right, and three people discover that an impaired driving investigation becomes considerably more complicated when the vehicle is not yours to begin with.
The Car That Turned Itself Off
On August 1, Ontario Provincial Police found a vehicle stopped on Highway 11 near Marten River. It had been stolen in Quebec and then remotely disabled, which is why it was sitting still on a highway rather than moving along it. A 39 year old Quebec driver is now facing impaired driving and theft charges.
Somewhere in this story there is a person who pressed a button on an app and ended a police chase that had not started yet. The charges have not been proven in court.
The Ambulance at the Concert
Late on August 27, a Phoenix Fire Department ambulance was staged outside a concert at Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre, which is exactly where you would want an ambulance to be on a night like that. Police say Grace Vicente, 24, got into the driver’s seat and drove off. The ambulance was running. The keys were not inside it.
She made it less than two miles before colliding with a pickup truck. She was arrested on suspicion of DUI and theft of means of transportation, and her bond was set at $7,500.
The detail I keep returning to is that the ambulance was left idling on purpose, because crews need the equipment powered and ready. Every safeguard in that vehicle was working. The one nobody had planned for was somebody simply climbing in.
Closer to Home
In May, Abbotsford police announced that officers had stopped a man who was driving a stolen car while impaired. They released a photograph of the breathalyzer screen, which read fail.
This is the part worth knowing. An Immediate Roadside Prohibition under section 215.41 of the Motor Vehicle Act applies to a person who drives or operates a motor vehicle. It says nothing about ownership. The Criminal Code takes the same view, and adds a separate offence under section 335 for taking a motor vehicle without consent, which is not the same thing as theft and is often the more realistic charge.
Then there is section 215.46, which is where it gets strange. When a fail prohibition is served, the officer is required to impound the vehicle for 30 days. The section does not say the vehicle should not be impounded if it turns out to be stolen. It does not say the vehicle should not be impounded if it is a postal van, or a delivery truck, or a trailer full of perishable food. It says impound it.
And the towing and storage costs fall to the owner. Strictly on the language of the statute, a person whose car was stolen from their driveway on Friday can find it in a compound on Monday, serving out a 30 day impoundment earned by somebody they have never met, with a bill attached to it. I do not know what happened in the Abbotsford case and I am not suggesting that is how it played out. I am saying the legislation, read as written, does not appear to contemplate the question at all.
That is worth remembering the next time somebody tells you an IRP is a simple administrative process. Simple is not the same as sensible.
See you next week. Drive your own car.
