Drunk Driver

I have to blog this to unwind; it's been a crazy night. My wife and I were second on the scene after a drunk driver was thrown out of his rolling car when he lost control on a icy corner doing about 120 km/h. The thing is, I feel like I could have done more to prevent it.

I was leaving Fairview after a board meeting (really good one, too) and noticed that the driver in front of me was driving erratically. (This reads a lot like the statement I wrote for the RCMP.) I'd followed the guy for about five minutes, debating weather or not to call 911, when he pulled out to pass a car just 200 yards away from an oncoming vehicle. That did it; I told my wife to call the cops.

So she gets on the phone and they tell us to get the make, model, and license plate from the truck he was driving. By this time he's doing 130 and way ahead of us, so I speed up and catch up to him. Now he's doing 80, so I passed him and my wife got the details.

Then the 911 operator hangs up and tells us the police will call back. When the cop called us we were heading into this massive coolie that the Peace River runs through. He told us to pull over at the bottom of the coolie, let the guy pass us, follow him out of the coolie, and he'd call us when we got to the top.

I parked well off the shoulder just before the guy came barreling past and did himself in. We quickly drove to the visitor's center and called 911 and then went to offer assistance (my wife's an RN). The guy was puking blood and reeking of alcohol; the cop pretty much left us and the guy coming across the bridge that he almost hit to look after him until the ambulance got there.

I was telling the cop that I regret not calling them five minutes earlier, because he might have been able to pull the drunk over and stop him. The cop just said, "You know what? He got what he deserved. I'm just glad he didn't take anyone with him."

But should we hope people get what they deserve. I mean, if we all got what we deserved we'd be dead. I told him I'm in the business of saving people and I would liked to have done better to help that man, stupid though he may have been.

I'm tired. Maybe I'll have this all figured out in the morning. I was at that scene for over an hour--way too long. Good night.

Picture of the Dunvegan Bridge by Chad Anderson via Structurae.