A girl went out bar hopping.
Driving home, she then went curb hopping in the parking lot of her apartment complex and hit a telephone pole. Apparently this was very low speed, but nevertheless she was sent to me for medical eval.
Her blood alcohol level was in the 320’s, just over four times the legal limit. Otherwise she was fine, without a scratch on her.
It took me a while to get to her, and by the time I did the police officer accompanying her was gone. So I never had a chance to ask him why he let her off with nothing more than a warning.
Are you kidding me? Now through tremendous effort she was actually holding herself together pretty impressively for 320ish, but still this girl was flat out drunk. Head-bobbing-garbled-speech-what-wreck-drunk.
I don’t get it. How can you not crack down on this? How can you condone drunk driving? She could just have easily crossed a median or run a red light or ended up in a ditch.
I thought about calling the officer but decided against it. As always, I had plenty of other stuff in the ER to deal with, and really it’s out of my jurisdiction. I would have no tolerance for law enforcement questioning my medical decisions.
Oh by the way, the same police department recently gave my wife a ticket for not having a license plate on the front of her car. Too bad she didn’t down half a bottle of goldschlager first.
February 22, 2008 at 11:07 am
I have a friend who’s a cop and he says that doing the paperwork for drunk drivers is so daunting that all cops hate it and will do their best to avoid it. Apparently it’s much more difficult and time-consuming than just writing out a ticket and it doesn’t buy them any more points in the long run, so they just avoid it. Sad, I know.
February 22, 2008 at 11:27 am
That’s what I was going to say. First striderous and now this.
February 22, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Nice opening for a lawsuit they’ve left open there. The next she gets drunk and drives, she might kill someone. Cue suing police department for negligence, since she at the least would have had her license suspended.
February 22, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Certainly a negligence liability on the part of the police department and the office. Isn’t that what they are paid to do – Protect and Serve?
February 22, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Ugh.
Speaking as a firefighter, who gets to see only too often, the fact that most drunk drivers barely hurt themselves, they usually end up killing/hurting someone else, this is just frustrating.
Speaking as a mom, it scares me to think that these are the type of people who will be surrounding my son, in his life. People with no regard for the lives around them.
The fact that the cop did nothing just makes me crazy.
February 22, 2008 at 4:09 pm
I would have called the police department and asked for the badge/beat number of the cop who brought her there and the name of the sergeant on duty. Tell them you need to include their names in the medical record since they left her in the ED without arresting her for DUI.
February 22, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Disgraceful. Imagine not doing your job because of excess paperwork. If that was kosher in the medical field no one would get treated. I still think that it is probably reasonable to call the police dept this late and tell them the situation. It should be a reflex but I know that you have to worry about facing that cop in the community if you see him again. He would likely get reprimanded and have a vendetta for you.
Keep up the good blog.
February 22, 2008 at 7:52 pm
I had the exact opposite experience with my DUI. (And, no, I will never drink the tiniest amount of alcohol and drive again. Or use my cellphone and drive. Or drive while tired. The thought of almost injuring someone else has definitely spread to all aspects of my life and how I conduct myself.) Hit an utility pole head-on at about 45 mph, no seat belt. Major concussion; I was bleeding, babbling, totally incoherent, and not drunk enough to be those last two things because of alcohol alone.
Anyway, they took me to the station and did the whole hour-long booking session where I kept barfing on myself, falling asleep, etc., and then they dumped me at the ED. The officer didn’t even wait for the attending to see me before he took off — of course, I had no idea where I was, what had happened in the last few hours, or why I was in the hospital to begin with.
I can’t even look at most booze anymore without associating it with the intense pain of the concussion. Surreal.
/so happy that she only injured herself that night. Stupid, stupid shit.
February 23, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Its one thing putting your own life at risk but a completely different and critical story when others are at risk due to someones ignorance or stupidity or downright arrogance.
February 24, 2008 at 1:35 pm
we have this happen in our ED often. most of the time, the officers leave to swear out a warrant and arrest the individual later (which makes no sense to me).
February 25, 2008 at 1:33 am
Dang.
I don’t even know what to say to that.
February 27, 2008 at 9:25 pm
we had a guy today with a 25cm x 6cm “rectal foreign body” today, which proceeded to ex-lap and colostomy.
i have x-rays to prove it’s size and girth. email me to obtain
March 12, 2008 at 2:53 am
It’s not the same everywhere. I was stopped for a snow covered license plate while driving straight and level on my side of the road, had a blood test of .070 (which took months to process), and about 50 weeks after my arrest I pleaded to non-alcohol reckless anyway rather than spend another $10,000 on a trial. Yes, some jurisdictions will try you for blood alcohol *under* the limit.
I guess it had the desired effect anyway, because right, wrong, or somewhere in between, I won’t be repeating that ever again. No way dude.
I don’t know what to say about .320 girl. Obviously, the law isn’t always applied in a way that makes sense.