We have covered many serious drunk driving car accidents in previous posts. Drunk driving accidents are a problem in Nashville and throughout Tennessee. Intoxicated drivers are usually aware of the dangers that drinking while driving can pose and choose to drive anyway. These bad decisions result in the unnecessary deaths of countless Tennessee residents and continue to provide the basis of wrongful death lawsuits throughout the state.
One drunk driver was recently sentenced to 12 years in prison for vehicular homicide. The 52-year-old New Market man's case is a bit unusual because he had five prior drunk driving convictions, no driver's license, and was paralyzed from the waist down.
Authorities say that the man used tobacco sticks to control the brake and accelerator pedals of his car. The man's creative way of driving also allowed him to run down a 49-year-old pedestrian with a blood alcohol level nearly three times the legal driving limit.
The trauma of this crash was even more difficult for the deceased pedestrian's family because the pedestrian's brother found his brother's body in the brother's driveway.
This accident highlights the tragic consequences of drunk driving the reckless disregard that some drunk drivers have of other people's safety. The drunk paralyzed driver was arrested before authorities knew of the pedestrian's death because the drunk driver crashed his SUV a short time after running down the pedestrian. Police found several liquor bottles, beer cans and a gun in the driver's SUV. The man has a DUI record stretching back to 1979 and was paralyzed from a car accident.
Source: Knoxville News Sentinel Co., "Paralyzed driver who worked pedals with sticks gets 12 years for vehicular homicide," Natalie Neysa Alund, Oct. 5, 2011