Articles Posted in Drunk Driving

A 29-year-old Oregon City woman died recently as a result of a two-car Oregon drunk driving accident, according to a report in The Oregonian.

The crash occurred just before 2 am on state route 213 in Oregon City, the newspaper reports, quoting a spokesperson with the Oregon State Police Portland Command. “Police said Jennifer Miller, 29, of Oregon City, drove eastbound on the highway and ran a red light, crashing into a southbound Dodge pickup… Miller was declared dead at the scene, police said,” according to the newspaper. A passenger traveling in her car suffered injuries the paper describes as “serious.”

The pick-up truck’s driver was not injured in the Portland-area car crash, and was reported to be cooperating with police. Though The Oregonian’s report on the crash does not seek to assign blame, it does note that the pickup’s driver “had a green signal at the time of the crash.”

A civil suit filed earlier this month here in Portland is an excellent illustration of Oregon dram shop law and the ways it seeks to protect the public at large and accident victims in particular. According to The Oregonian, the husband of a woman who died in a Portland drunk driving accident last February is suing not only the alleged drunk driver but also two bars which, he claims, served the driver “while he was visibly intoxicated.”

The newspaper goes on to add that “the complaint accuses the bars of negligence for allowing him to drive, failing to determine whether he planned to drive and failing to alert authorities.”

This is practically the definition of a claim under the Oregon dram shop law – a statute that says a bar or alcohol retailer can be held legally responsibly for the damage done by a patron who clearly should not have been served in the first place.

Chalk one up for Orange County, California in the quest for innovative ways to combat drunk driving. According to a recent article in the Orange County Register a recent student assembly in the San Clemente High School gym featured “an actual court session and sentencing of a DUI defendant.”

The paper reports that the County Superior Court session was moved to the school for part of one day as a way of emphasizing the seriousness of drunk driving and its consequences. Placing the session in the school allows anti-drunk driving activists to demonstrate this directly to teens – a group who have traditionally both been at extremely high risk for drunk driving injuries and fatalities while also being unusually difficult to reach in effective ways.

A session later in the day at the same school featured “an Orange County deputy district attorney (discussing) family consequences from a teen DUI or DUI-related crash.”