Amend reasonable and probable grounds for alcohol testing. There are occasions when an enforcement officer who wishes to administer a roadside breath test or take a subject to the station to test for alcohol may not have the grounds to do so. This change would save time and administration for officers and the judicial system, and would avoid the need to apply for a bench warrant for a blood sample from injured drivers transported to the hospital. Facilitate the requirement for a breath test within two hours of apprehension. The first test of the accused on an approved alcohol breath testing device must be conducted within two hours of the time they were stopped in their vehicle.
External factors can make adhering to the two hour limit difficult.
The time required to reach the police station and to contact counsel are among the difficulties enforcement officers face regularly. Although tests administered after the two-hour limit are admissible, they must be accompanied by the testimony of a forensic expert who can extrapolate the BAC reading back to the time the subject was originally stopped. This can be expensive and time consuming for both the enforcement agencies and the judicial system. Simply having a law on the books is useless and counterproductive unless that law is strictly enforced and upheld by the courts. The CACP-Transport Canada survey cited above found that DWI ranks fifth in priority among 15 offenses, up from eighth in 1981.