Drink Driving

Following on from my post about road safety, I mentioned that I attended a RTC recently that was carrying a group of four girls.  As part of any RTC, we breathalyse both drivers as a matter of routine; drunken behaviour can often be masked as shock sets in, so getting a definitive reading is useful to rule out any other offences.

The 18 year old girl that I spoke to was shaken but otherwise ok bar a few bruises and was happy to blow into out breathalyser; unfortunately for her, she blew a roadside reading of 53µg per 100ml of breath.  The legal limit is 35µg, so the rather shaken 18 year old had her first arrest.  Perhaps I’m being a bit naïve here but I honestly believe that this girl didn’t intend to drink and drive, nor did she think that she was unfit to drive.  She said that she had a bit of a heavy night and stopped drinking a bit after midnight.  She was most certainly over the limit in the morning and this had come to a bit of a shock to her, so on top of having the guilt of seeing one of her friends being stretchered into an ambulance and another in pain with some broken bones, she now had the ordeal of being arrested by me. 

I spoke with one of the ambulance staff to see what their intention was for the young driver.  Usually, we would take her to the police station and require her to use the evidential breathalyser for the readings that would be used in the charging decision.  We try and get them to custody as soon as possible because every minute they are on the roadside their body is metabolising the alcohol and we are essentially losing evidence.  However, the ECP (Emergency Care Practitioner) said that they recommend she be taken to hospital just to check there were no unobvious injuries.  I knew at the point that this job would keep me tied up for the rest of the shift. 

We have a procedure for people being taken to the hospital; it involves a rather long form and a kit for taking blood.  One of my colleagues remarked that the form is like an adventure game book, you read a paragraph and then get sent on a quest to page 78 for the next part of the story.  It’s not quite so confusing when you get used to it, but it takes a minute or so to figure out.  Once the patient/detainee has been assessed by a doctor we need their consent to take a sample.  We then have to call out our own doctor to the hospital to draw the blood for impartiality reasons, all whilst the person is losing alcohol from their system.  It took about 2 hours between being arrested and finally getting consent from the A&E doctor.  After having the consent form signed, we were told that she was being discharged from hospital, so although we had started the hospital procedure, we decided that going to a police station would be quicker than waiting for our doctor to arrive, as well as realising A&E wanted the bed back. 

So around 3 hours after being arrested my prisoner is finally on an evidential breathalyser.  My colleague and I were convinced that she would not only blow under the limit but quite substantially below the limit.  She hadn’t had a drink for around 12 hours and her body wasn’t absorbing any more alcohol in her system and at a rough guess we estimate that most people metabolise 10µg per hour of alcohol, so we expected a reading of maybe 20-25µg, well under the legal limit. 

The result surprised us both: the lowest reading of the two we take was 45µg, remember the legal limit is 35µg.  As she had blown over the limit but was under 50µg she had what is called “the statutory option” of having a urine or blood sample instead.  We can’t offer advice on what to take but she was given the options and declined.  I’ll follow up on the implications of this in another blog. 

As she was still over the legal limit, we couldn’t interview her until she had sobered up a bit more which means she probably wouldn’t have been legal to drive until around 1530 in the afternoon at the earliest.   Many of the general public don’t realise quite how long after the night before it can take to properly sober up and this really prove that.

So after just wanting to get a Mc Donalds, this otherwise law abiding 18 year old had written off her car and another, injured three of her friends and one other motorist and will likely get a drink driving conviction for simply not realising that she needs longer to sober up the next day.  The funny thing is that it could have been so much worse and they are actually quite lucky.