In Edmonton, Canada, James McIlwrick has been sentenced to four and a half years jail for killing two people in a car accident while he was under the influence of marijuana.
James McIlwrick was driving a pickup truck which slammer headon into a car with Tammy Engelking and her coworker, Henry Huanxin Yao who both died of sustained injuries.
The court case and sentencing saw an emotional plea from Engelking’s faimly with her father saying, “I guess if anything comes from this, it is the realization that marijuana, and smoking it in a vehicle, you’re causing impairment as you drive. That’s really scary to me and for people out there, please consider that. It’s a horrendous amount of hurt and it just devastates families. Think about it before you do it.”
The case raises another problem surrounding the issue of drug driving.
While tests for sobriety are currently standard practice in many countries such as breathaliser machines, no corresponding on-the-spot test currently exists to test if a driver is under the influence of drugs.
As such, the deterrent effect of possibly being caught driving under the influence of drugs could arguably said to be somewhat lessened, providing a person has not consumed enough of a drug to be visibly effected.
And so the spectre of drug driving continues to cause problems for enforcement authorities, not to mention the families of those killed as a result.