RCMP in Nova Scotia say the case of an extremely drunk driver who crashed her SUV with her two young children inside marks an unsettling trend of drivers blowing well over the legal limit.

Cpl. Joe Taplin, an RCMP spokesman, said officers are nabbing impaired drivers with much higher readings on breathalyzer tests than the legal limit of .08, or 80 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood — whether at night or during the day.

"They've seen a norm of higher readings lately," he said. "Usually, you get 110, 120 mg in 100 ml of blood. Now the readings are coming in around .150 to .220, .230, which is fairly high and fairly intoxicated individuals."

On a Friday afternoon last month, a 41-year-old woman rear-ended a driver, then crashed her SUV into a ditch on Hammonds Plains Road in Halifax, while her two young sons were in the vehicle.

The SUV was damaged but no one was hurt.

The woman could only get into a police cruiser with the help of a firefighter and RCMP officer. At the RCMP detachment, she recorded a blood alcohol level between .330 and .340 — four times the legal limit.

She said she had been drinking a lot of wine quickly, said senior Crown attorney Rick Woodburn.

"When you get to those readings you're looking at alcohol poisoning," he told CBC News. "For somebody even my size, drinking that much would render me unconscious."

On Wednesday, Catherine Irene Gagnon was fined $1,500, lost her driver's licence for a year and was handed a year's probation.

Woodburn said he would have sought a jail term of one or two months, but Gagnon pleaded guilty, started a treatment program and had no previous record.

Working on a plan

Justice Minister Cecil Clarke said he's working on a plan to crack down on impaired drivers and will introduce legislation this fall, though he didn't give details.

The minimum sentence for a first-time offence is a $1,000 fine and a one-year driving ban.

Taplin isn't sure why officers are catching more extremely drunk drivers, though he suspects it's linked to new enforcement methods.

For the past year, the province has been piloting a new impaired driving unit made up of RCMP and local police. They stopped 42,000 vehicles in the South Shore region, catching nearly 100 impaired drivers.

The government announced Thursday it's expanding the program to cover all of mainland Nova Scotia. It hopes to cut drunk-driving injuries by 40 per cent.

Springhill police Chief Gary Copeland supports the move.

"The bottom line — it'll save lives," Copeland said.