| TheNewGirl | 03-21-2011 05:09 PM |
Truck Driver to Lose Job over Drunk Driving Laws
Quote:
A Port Coquitlam man expects to lose his job after feeling the weight of B.C.’s new drunk-driving laws.
Ken Prosser is, for now, employed as a truck driver for the City of Burnaby, but he’s not doing any driving. On Jan. 29 he was pulled over by police in Port Moody while off work. He refused to blow into a breathalyzer.
That decision earned him the same administrative punishment of a legally drunk driver who blows over .08: fines, fees, a 90-day licence suspension and a one-year, post-suspension requirement that any vehicle he drives be equipped with an ignition-interlock device.
The latter imposition has proved to be Prosser’s undoing. Interlock devices require an alcohol-free breath to allow the car to start. City of Burnaby officials aren’t keen to see any such devices on the 40 or so garbage, recycling or dump trucks Prosser might operate.
“The city has said straight up that we cannot allow these things to be stuck on our vehicles,” said Prosser, 38.
Fines and fees will end up costing around $5,000, and Prosser’s lost almost $7,000 in wages since he was immediately suspended from driving for 90 days after refusing to blow on the breathalyzer.
“I’m not trying to downplay the severity of drinking and driving,” Prosser said. “The penalties, I deserve it.”
But Prosser believes he has been unjustly hit with an extra punishment because of what he does for a living.
“I don’t even have a speeding ticket on my licence,” he said. “I’m being told now that I’m not going to have my job. I’m about to lose my career, my job, for a first-time person who was pulled over. The crime does not fit the punishment.”
Richmond lawyer David Baker, who specializes in drunk-driving cases, said a person in Prosser’s position cannot escape the consequences, including the ignition-interlock.
“You can’t fight any of this,” Baker said of the administrative sanctions enshrined in law last year, which have eliminated most drunk-driving criminal charges in favour of immediate penalties initiated by police at the roadside.
The Motor Vehicle Act specifies that the personal circumstances of people falling afoul of the law cannot be considered in relation to punishment, Baker said.
“The guy who drives for a living and who’s going to lose his house because he’s not going to make his mortgage payments, who’s going to lose his job, he can’t bring that up,” Baker said. “The statute does not allow the adjudicators to consider that.”
The City of Burnaby — which did not respond by deadline for comment — has said Prosser could keep his job if he were not required to use an interlock while working, said Rick Kotar, president of Prosser’s union, CUPE Local 23.
Moving Prosser into a labourer’s position for the year of his interlock requirement would open up a “Pandora’s box” for the city, Kotar said.
“There aren’t just a whole bunch of labouring jobs just hanging around,” Kotar said. “You do it for one guy, how many guys do you just slog into a labouring position if they lose their licence?
“He was hired as a driver. He’s unable to do his job as required, and that’s not through anybody’s fault but his own.”
Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/Truc...#ixzz1HHnroqwg
| I don't get what the guy's whining about. If you work with your hands you don't stick them in a blender on your free time. If you're a model you don't tattoo your face when you're off work. If you're a politician you can't post pictures on face book of yourself getting drunk with teenagers.
The shit you do in your free time, effects your job. |
