What is impaired driving?

Impaired driving means operating a vehicle (including cars, trucks, boats, snowmobiles and off-road vehicles) while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

It is a crime under the Criminal Code of Canada and the consequences are serious. You may:

lose your license
have your vehicle impounded
need to pay an administrative monetary penalty
need to attend an education or treatment program
be fined upon conviction
be required to install an ignition interlock device in your vehicle
spend time in jail

Ontario is a leader in combating impaired driving through some of the toughest laws and programs in North America.

Drinking and driving

Even one drink can reduce your ability to react to things that happen suddenly while you are driving. The effects of alcohol include blurred or double vision, impaired attention and slowed reflexes. Your life and the lives of others can change forever if you drive after drinking alcohol.

Blood alcohol concentration

The amount of alcohol in your body is measured by the amount of the alcohol in your blood. This is called blood alcohol concentration, or BAC. Once you take a drink, there is no way to guess what your BAC is.

Many factors can affect your blood alcohol level including:

how fast you drink
whether you are male or female
your body weight
the amount of food in your stomach

In Ontario and the rest of Canada, the maximum legal BAC for fully licensed drivers is 80 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood (0.08). Driving with BAC over 0.08 is a criminal offence.

Warn range

In Ontario, your BAC does not have to be over the 0.08 legal limit to result in serious consequences. If you register a BAC from 0.05 to 0.08 (commonly referred to as the warn range), you will face provincial administrative penalties.

Drug impaired driving

Drugs can also impair your ability to drive. This is true for both illegal drugs and prescription or over-the-counter medication.

Tips to avoid impaired driving

There are simple steps you can take to avoid driving while you’re impaired by drugs or alcohol:

make sure you have a plan to get home safely
ask your doctor or pharmacist about side effects related to driving when using prescription medication
read the information on the package of any prescription drugs or over-the-counter medicine, including allergy and cold remedies
ask your doctor or pharmacist about how a prescription drug could affect you- drugs and alcohol together can impair your driving even more than either one alone

Remember, fatigue and stress will also affect your ability to drive safely.

Consequences of impaired driving

Zero BAC

The Zero BAC law means that certain drivers cannot have any presence of alcohol in their blood while they drive. This law applies to:

all drivers age 21 or under
novice drivers of any age

If you are caught with a BAC above zero, here is what will happen:

your driver’s license will be suspended on the spot for 24 hours
if convicted, your driver’s license will be suspended again for at least 30 days and you will receive a $60-$500 fine

If you are a novice driver and have your licence suspended for drinking and driving, your licence could be cancelled. You will have to retake all your driving tests and repay all the fees.

If your BAC tests in the Warn Range (0.05 – 0.08):

Consequences for driving in the Warn Range.
Number of instances	Consequences
First time	3-day roadside license suspension (cannot be appealed) $150 administrative monetary penalty
Second time (within 5 years)	7-day roadside license suspension (cannot be appealed) Mandatory alcohol education program $150 administrative monetary penalty
Third and subsequent times (within 5 years)	30-day roadside license suspension (cannot be appealed) Mandatory alcohol treatment program Six-month ignition interlock $150 administrative monetary penalty

If you test over the legal limit of 0.08 OR refuse a drug or alcohol test:

90-day roadside license suspension
$150 administrative monetary penalty
7 day vehicle impoundment

If you are convicted of impaired driving:


Number of instances	Penalties
First time	Mandatory alcohol education or treatment program 1 year minimum requirement to drive a car equipped with an ignition interlock device No minimum jail sentence $1,000 fine License suspended for 1 year*
Second time	Mandatory alcohol education or treatment program 3 year minimum requirement to drive a car equipped with an ignition interlock device 30-day minimum jail sentence Fine amount at the discretion of the judge License suspended for 3 years
Third and subsequent times	Mandatory alcohol education or treatment program Lifetime minimum requirement to drive a car equipped with an ignition interlock device 120-day minimum jail sentence Fine amount at the discretion of the judge Lifetime license suspension (can be reduced to 10 years if certain conditions are met)

*The Reduced Suspension with Ignition Interlock Conduct Review Program will eligible drivers convicted for the first time of an alcohol impaired driving offence under the Criminal Code to reduce their licence suspension in return for meeting specific requirements, such as the mandatory installation of an approved ignition interlock device in their vehicle.

Common cognitive processes

Not only can personality traits of DUI offenders be dissimilar from the rest of the population, but so can their thought processes, or cognitive processes. They are unique in that “they often drink despite the severity of legal and financial sanctions imposed on them by society.”

In additional to these societal restraints, DUI offenders ignore their own personal experience, including both social and physical consequences. The study “Cognitive Predictors of Alcohol Involvement and Alcohol consumption-Related Consequences in a Sample of Drunk-Driving Offenders” was performed in Albuquerque, New Mexico on the cognitive, or mental, factors of DUI offenders. Characteristics such as gender, marital status, and age of these DWI offenders were similar to those in other populations. Approximately 25% of female and 21% of male offenders had received “a lifetime diagnosis of alcohol abuse” and 62% of females and 70% of males “received a diagnosis of alcohol dependence.”All of the offenders had at least one DWI and males were more likely to have multiple citations. In terms of drinking patterns approximately 25% stated that “they had drunk alcohol with in the past day, while an additional 32% indicated they had drunk within the past week.” In regards to domestic drinking, “25% of the sample drank at least once per week in their own homes.” Different items were tested to see if they played a role in the decision to drink alcohol, which includes socializing, the expectation that drinking is enjoyable, financial resources to purchase alcohol, and liberation from stress at the work place. The study also focused on two main areas, “intrapersonal cues”, or internal cues, that are reactions “to internal psychological or physical events” and “interpersonal cues” that result from “social influences in drinking situations.” The two largest factors between tested areas were damaging alcohol use and its correlation to “drinking urges/triggers.” Once again different behaviors are characteristic of male and female. Males are “more likely to abuse alcohol, be arrested for DWI offenses, and report more adverse alcohol-related consequences.” However, effects of alcohol on females vary because the female metabolism processes alcohol significantly when compared to males, which increases their chances for intoxication. The largest indicator for drinking was situational cues which comprised “indicators tapping psychological (e.g. letting oneself down, having an argument with a friend, and getting angry at something), social (e.g. relaxing and having a good time), and somatic cues (e.g. how good it tasted, passing by a liquor store, and heightened sexual enjoyment).”

It may be that internal forces are more likely to drive DWI offenders to drink than external, which is indicated by the fact that the brain and body play a greater role than social influences. This possibility seems particularly likely in repeat DWI offenders, as repeat offences (unlike first-time offences) are not positively correlated with the availability of alcohol. Another cognitive factor may be that of using alcohol to cope with problems. It is becoming increasingly apparently that the DWI offenders do not use proper coping mechanisms and thus turn to alcohol for the answer. Examples of such issues “include fights, arguments, and problems with people at work, all of which imply a need for adaptive coping strategies to help the high-risk drinker to offset pressures or demands.” DWI offenders would typically prefer to turn to alcohol than more healthy coping mechanisms and alcohol can cause more anger which can result in a vicious circle of drinking more alcohol to deal with alcohol-related issues. This is a not the way professionals tell people how to best deal with the struggles of everyday life and calls for “the need to develop internal control and self-regulatory mechanisms that attenuate stress, mollify the influence of relapse-based cues, and dampen urges to drink as part of therapeutic interventions.”