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| "Shad-yup, you! I'm drivin', fer
shår..." |
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Lithuanian police were so astonished when they
pulled over a truck driver and his breathalyzer test registered
18 times the legal alcohol limit, they thought their testing device
must be broken. It wasn't.
Police said Tuesday 41-year-old Vidmantas Sungaila
registered 7.27 grams per liter of alcohol in his blood repeatedly
on different devices when he was pulled over for driving his
truck down the center of a two-lane highway 60 miles from the
capital, Vilnius on Saturday.
For people who live in Rio Linda, that equates
to an astonishing 0.726 blood alcohol level (BAC).
Lithuania's legal driving limit is 0.4 grams
per liter (0.04 in U.S. units - all U.S. States now consider
0.08 as legally drunk, twice that of Lithuania and most other
European States).
"This guy should have been lying dead,
but he was still driving. It must be an unofficial national
record," Saulius Skvernelis, the director of the national
police traffic control service, told the AP. "He was of
high spirits and grinning the whole time he was questioned."
Medical experts say anything above 3.5 grams
per liter of alcohol in the blood is lethal for most people.
"A person this intoxicated should be in
an intensive care unit, not behind the wheel," said Tautvydas
Zikaras, head of the dependence illness center in the country's
second-largest city, Kaunas. Zikaras said he had never heard
or read of someone being so drunk.
Sungaila, who was slapped with a 3,000 litas
($1,110) fine and the loss of his license for up to three years,
told police he had been drinking the night before and tried
to freshen up by downing a pint of beer for breakfast.
Lithuania has one of the worst road safety records
in the European Union. Last year, 760 people died in traffic
accidents in this country of 3.5 million residents. Most were
alcohol-related.
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