The Plano Police Department dispatcher put out the call of an intoxicated motorist northbound on Highway 75, complete with vehicle description provided by a caller reporting the vehicle. It was right in front of me, westbound on Plano Parkway a couple of miles off of Highway 75. Since it takes a few minutes from the time dispatch receives a call until they put it out to patrol, I figured it must be the same vehicle.
The caller had described the vehicle as “weaving wildly all over the road,” but as I followed it, the driving was perfect. We were going the speed limit, driving straight and unwavering in the right-hand lane, with nothing at all to attract suspicion.
Still, after a couple of miles following it, I decided that the call reporting erratic behavior merited a traffic stop, so I flipped on my overheads. The vehicle immediately pulled right to stop at the curb.
I walked up to just behind the driver’s and asked the driver to please exit the vehicle so we could talk. The door opened and a young girl, possibly 18, rolled out of the driver’s seat and down to the pavement. She crawled on all fours to follow me to the back of her car.
I helped her to a standing position with her trunk lid as a prop for her to lean against. Her breath was putrid with the aroma of deep alveolar alcohol. I placed her under arrest for DUI.
If it hadn’t been for the call of a concerned citizen following her up the freeway, there is no telling what might have happened that night. She might have made it home just fine. Or she might have killed herself or another.
The fact that her driving was “perfect” when I was behind her gave mute testimony to the fact that drunk drivers are not always easy to spot, especially if they see a police car in their rearview mirror and they focus intently on their driving.
The first DUI I worked was in 1974. I was a rookie, just cut loose to patrol alone. A 16 year old boy was walking down the sidewalk, 10 feet or more from the pavement, when a drunk driver jumped the curb and slammed the kid going maybe 40 MPH. The kid’s head smashed down onto the hood of the car and when I saw the hood later, it looked like a bowling ball had been dropped from several stories above and left a deep bowl-shaped dent in the hood.
The driver fled the scene, but came to PD an hour later and confessed to being drunk and hitting the kid. His BAC at that point was 0.17%.
I went to the morgue to see the dead kid. He was on a stainless-steel tray. The faint beginnings of dark hair were starting to appear on his calves. He had small, new tufts of black hair in his armpits and pubic area. Liquid brains were oozing out of both ears as he lay there. He never knew what hit him.
The judge in that case ruled that the driver had suffered enough mental anguish and let him off with a $100 fine for leaving the scene of an accident. This was years before MADD gained prominence. I’m glad we treat drunk driving more seriously now.
