Updated: According to police, a drunk driver caused a crash last night at the intersection of Leary Ave NW and NW Market Street. Police say they responded to the scene just after 10:45 p.m. and found that a black Toyota sedan was traveling north on Leary Avenue NW and apparently ignored a red traffic light and struck a brown Chrysler sedan. The driver of the Chrysler was taken to Harborview Medical Center for treatment of non-life threatening injuries. The driver of the Toyota was placed under arrest for DUI and taken to Northwest Hospital for a blood draw to determine the level of intoxication, police say. Traffic Collision Investigation detectives responded for collision site processing and investigation.
According to Bryant d Johnson in comments: “the Chrysler is black ..’Anita’ driver of the Chrysler is home today recovering.. and she wishes to thank all the good Ballard people for there help at this time . and for taking the time out of there evening to stay around and file reports with the local law enforcement.. and a special thanks to ‘mike'”
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the Chrysler is black ..”Anita ” driver of the Chrysler is home today recovering.. and she wishes to thank all the good Ballard people for there help at this time . and for taking the time out of there evening to stay around and file reports with the local law enforcement.. and a special thanks to “mike ” .
This must be a mistake, only cyclists run red lights. Cars always obey the law.
The Ballard campus of Swedish would have been much closer; so I’m wondering if there’s a good reason why the driver was taken all the way over to NWH. The campus may be small, and they may no longer have an ICU, but they should be able to process that blood draw, and save the city/county a little time and money.
trauma ward
Great question – and you have me curious. I will see if I can get an answer. I will guess, in advance, that because NW Hospital is affiliated with the UW, there’s some special state agency agreement, but that is a guess. I’ll pose that question to 3 contacts I know and see what I can round up.
This is an instance where the DUI driver should lose his license for life.
That is how DUI’s work in Russia. You take driving drunk more seriously if it costs you your license for life.
As much as I’d like to see that happen, the reality is that you’d just wind up with more people driving around without licenses, and then probably without insurance too, and also those same people would be more likely to try to out run the cops for traffic stops, and flee the scene if they get in any kind of accident.
In the states that passed laws prohibiting non green card holding immigrants from obtaining drivers licenses they’ve also seen a huge spike in hit and runs, uninsured drivers, and drivers fleeing traffic stops.
Suspend this drunk’s license for a few years, maybe a little jail time, a nice big fine, but after the punishment you have to believe that people can be rehabilitated or we’ll have to go the other extreme and put everyone in jail who’s done something so minor as to smoke pot…oh, wait…
I should hardly think we’d want to look at Russia as the model of criminal justice.