Drive Drunk, And That’s What You Get

I’m the owner of a larger tow company that has the majority of local police departments’ contracts for accidents and impounds. Last night, I was called out at 0030 hours for a rollover one-car accident. It was no big deal, but it was in the county’s largest city, about twenty miles from my office and home. I drove out and recovered the vehicle using a flatbed tow truck.

I am driving back from the accident scene with the totaled car on the back of the truck. I am on a two-lane highway — one lane going each direction with a double yellow line in the center — which has a speed limit of fifty-five. I come across a car going forty miles per hour and occasionally drifting toward the shoulder or the yellow line. After about five minutes of this, I see through her rear window that the person is drinking from a bottle.

I immediately pick up my phone, dial the non-emergency dispatch number, and explain the situation to them. They start an officer out to intercept the driver as, from my description, they have checked all the boxes for a DUI stop.

An officer pulls up behind me while we’re going down the road and turns on his red and blues. I flip on my white and yellow lights as I slow down, signaling the officer to go around as I have no shoulder to go to. As this is happening, the car in front of me immediately SLAMS on its brakes, causing me to lock up my air brakes and just barely miss rear-ending them. The police officer, luckily, is already in the opposite lane, and by the time he reacts to slow down, he has passed both of us.

We are now at about ten miles per hour, and the officer is leapfrogged to the front of the line. He turns his car at a forty-five-degree angle and stops, stopping the car dead in its tracks. I stop with my lights on behind him about two car lengths back, again at a forty-five-degree angle to protect everyone from any oncoming traffic as we are now blocking half of the road.

I jump out and walk around the back of my truck and up the shoulder of the road toward the officer’s cruiser. As I’m doing this, the driver jumps out of her car and starts screaming.

Driver: “That person is stalking me! I’m scared for my life! That rapist followed me from the pub I was at!”

The officer on scene is the same officer I just spent over an hour with on the road cleaning up the wreck that is still on my truck. Out of pure shock, I turn to the officer and say:

Me: “You know there is no way I was anywhere near her, right?”

Thankfully, he confirms it isn’t possible. The driver does not like this one bit. She starts cussing the officer out.

Driver: “Do your job! I pay your salary and that makes you my servant!”

A second officer arrived and parked behind my truck with lights on. I fell back to direct the light traffic that was coming through. As I was directing traffic, I listened to this belligerent woman insult these officers over and over. Of course, she failed the field sobriety test, and out came the breathalyzer. She blew a .12, and as soon as the handcuffs came out, it was like someone lubed the woman up with grease as she was slipping and sliding out of the two officers’ hands.

I watched for probably five minutes as they wrestled her to the ground and finally got her into cuffs. The first officer approached me and asked if I’d like to impound the woman’s car, too. I happily accepted and had it loaded on to my wheel lift in about two minutes.

I was just awoken not too long ago by a call about the woman. She was asking about her car at my office, and one of my dispatchers called to double-check that there wasn’t a hold on the car. It turns out the woman had to wait sixty minutes before we could release her car, as all DUI arrests in that county have a mandatory twelve-hour impound on the vehicle. I’m sure the girls working my office were thrilled to have the company.