Boston Drunk Driving Accident Lawyer Blog
According to a recent news article from Fox 6 Springfield, a pregnant woman was arrested for drunk driving after she crashed her SUV into another car. She also had two young children with her at the time of her arrest.
Authorities say defendant, who was six months pregnant, was driving with her 18-month-old twins when she rear-ended another vehicle. When police responded to the scene of the crash, officers report smelling a strong odor of intoxicating beverages and found beer inside defendant’s vehicle. Police administered field sobriety tests, which she allegedly failed, and then she took a breath test and blew 0.36. This is three times the legal limit in the United States, including in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
After police placed defendant under arrest, the father of her twins took custody of the children. Police notified the state department of child services of defendant’s alleged drunk driving with children not properly restrained in the vehicle. While there were minor injuries reported, luckily no one was seriously injured in what could have been a much more serious car accident.
One of the reasons people are willing to act with an extreme disregard for the safety of others (including their own family) is because of the effect excessive consumption of alcohol has on the human body. With a blood alcohol above .35, medical research predicts someone could experience depressed or completely abolished physical reflexes. A person could also go unconscious at this level of intoxication, experience incontinence, suffer from hypothermia, have respiratory and circulatory failure, and could die from acute alcohol poisoning. It is not uncommon for police to find a driver at this level of intoxication asleep behind the wheel of a running car covered in vomit and urine.
While this may paint a rather disturbing picture, as our Boston drunk driving accident attorneys have read in vehicle crash reports, this happens all the time in our area. It is hard to imagine how anyone could even get behind the wheel at this level of intoxication, and there is no way a person could safely operate a motor vehicle, even if they are able to start their car.
In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, our civil car accident negligence law requires all motorists to operate a vehicle in a safe manner so as to prevent foreseeable accidents to foreseeable persons and property. Failing to do so is considered a breach of one’s statutorily imposed duty of care in a civil personal injury lawsuit.
It should be noted, while a blood of alcohol concentration three times the state legal limit is extremely high, it does not take anywhere this level of intoxication to be a dangerous to others on the roads and sidewalks of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. There are even cases where a driver is well under the legal limit of 0.08 grams per hundred milliliters of blood, and the driver was still intoxicated to the point of negligence. This is because any appreciable level of intoxication will slow a driver’s reaction time and impair his or her ability to safely operate a motor vehicle.
If you have been injured in a Boston drunk driving accident, call for a free and confidential appointment at (617) 777-7777.
Additional Resources:
Police: Pregnant Woman Charged with Drunk Driving , March 13th, 2015, Fox 6 Springfield.
More Blog Entries:
Boston Drunk Drivers Not Threatened by Officers, June 12, 2013, Boston Drunk Driving Accident Lawyer Blog