A Regina police officer, who pulled over a dad driving his children to school drunk earlier this year, is hoping the new impaired driving legislation will spark change.
“It’s a sad state of affairs when something like that has to trigger that kind of response at a political level,” said Const. Curtis Warnar. “Hopefully this is one more push to eliminate the epidemic of impaired driving in our province.”
In a bill first presented in the Saskatchewan legislature Thursday, it suggested people who drive with a blood alcohol level of .04 or higher with kids under 16 in the vehicle should see longer roadside licence suspensions and vehicle seizures.
Warnar said he’d be satisfied with the stiffer penalties, but added it speaks to Saskatchewan’s impaired driving problem.
“At the end of the day, as we’ve seen with the statistics in our province — we’re the highest per capita in Canada — if this is the one extra thing that drives those numbers down, that’s really great,” he said.
In September, Warnar took to Twitter to tweet out about his experience stopping the man who blew four times the limit while driving his kids to school. He said it was one of the few calls that truly bothered him over his nine years in the police service.