Last Monday evening, a 95-year old driver perished in an accident when his car was involved in a head-on collision with a bus.

The elderly Porterville man was driving westbound in his 1995 Pontiac on Road 296 when he inexplicably drifted into the eastbound lanes. He crashed into the bus driven by Cheryl Lyn Seitz, 48, of Porterville.

He was taken to Community Regional Medical Center where he died. Three bus passengers, David Johnson, 41, and Angela Roberts, 38, of Lindsay, and Luz Carrillo, 34, of Porterville suffered minor injuries and were taken Sierra View District Hospital for treatment.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, there were 26 million Americans aged 70 years old and older living in the United States — approximately 67 percent these were also drivers. Now that baby boomers are fast becoming old, the growing number of elderly drivers now presents a serious road safety concern.

While elderly people do not get involved in as many crashes as teenagers, a number of them still lose their lives in fatal crashes. In 2008, as many as 4,268 people aged 70 and above were killed in motor vehicle crashes.

The main reason for fatality rates however, was the elderly driver’s fragility. Fragility or their risk of death in a crash increases around ages 60-64 and continues to rise with increasing age.

As drivers age, their physical, cognitive, and visual abilities may also decline. Most often, their vision starts to become impaired and they have slower reflexes. Also, many older drivers take medications for various age-related ailments. Medicine, whether prescription or over the counter, can impair driving ability at any age but can be especially impairing for an older driver.

So if you are an elderly driver, or know someone who continues to drive despite their old age and condition, it would be best to undergo screening the next time the license is to be renewed. It also isn’t advisable to take medication right before driving as some drugs can cause drowsiness and even trigger a DUI-related accident.

There is no general rule regarding elderly drivers being allowed to drive as long as they are able, therefore, it would be up to you, whether as the elderly driver or his/her family, to take appropriate measures to ensure that there is no road safety risk to avoid causing accidents.

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Alexandra Kerry is finally free of any DUI charges.This came after prosecutors declined to pursue charges against her for insufficient evidence.

The incident in question started when Alexandra was stopped by an officer for an expired registration.

Earlier, Kerry was arrested for suspicion of DUI but the breathalyzer showed that she only had .06 BAC. It is well under the .08 BAC limit in California.

Many would raise an uproar that she probably got off the hook for being the daughter of John Kerry.

However being the daughter of a senator and a former presidential aspirant was not really what cleared her.

It was her BAC.

It is routine in California for prosecutors to stop pursuing DUI charges against drivers who passed a breathalyzer test.

Since Alexandra registered a .06, under the law even if she did have a few drinks, she was technically not under the influence of alcohol.

The exception would probably be for drivers aged 21 and below where a BAC of .01 % can already result to an automatic 1 year suspension of driver’s license.

Anyway Alexandra is far from being a minor and the prosecutors found insufficient evidence that she was under the influence.

That should serve as a conclusion on this issue.

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As the saying goes, “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime”.

East county residents (or at least, those with outstanding traffic warrants) got a rude awakening when the Sheriff’s Department assisted by officers from the El Cajon and La Mesa police and the California Highway Patrol conducted a sweeping arrest.

The sweep targeted 750 people with outstanding warrants for driving under the influence and misdemeanor violations such as driving under a suspended license and reckless driving. Majority of the warrants were for DUI.

The operation which started at a very early 6 o’clock in the morning, was dubbed as Highway 67 Arrive Alive Campaign. However, only 67 arrests were made from the original target.

Several of those arrested also had more than one warrant of arrest issued against them and according to the Sheriff’s Department, 105 warrants were taken off the books. The 67 people arrested were booked into county jail and will likely face enhanced penalties.

While drunk drivers are obviously road hazards, drivers who operate their vehicles recklessly and pay no heed to traffic rules are just as dangerous.

A lot of the times, while people seem to think DUI is harmless or that speeding isn’t dangerous at all, these drivers often learn their lessons too late because of a tragic car crash they have triggered because of their driving behavior.

For a lot of motorists and pedestrians, every minute these drivers are allowed to drive is a threat to their security and safety. Enforcing the law through warranted arrests is one way of pre-empting drunken car crashes or motor vehicle accidents caused by the reckless driving.

Some lessons are learned through tragedy and some are learned through the enforcement of laws as they should be.

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Well, the law says that for a person to be charged DUI he had to be driving a vehicle, and apparently motorized upholstery counts as a vehicle too.

That’s what we found out today when a Minnesota man pleaded guilty to driving his motorized La-Z-boy while drunk.

The Laz-boy was powered by a converted lawnmower and even had a cup holder and a stereo.

According to reports, Dennis LeRoy, 62, told the police that he left a bar in Proctor aboard his La-Z-boy after drinking 8-9 bottles of beer.

He eventually crashed to a parked vehicle.

The prosecutors said that his BAC at the time of the “vehicular” accident was .29%, which is very high and serves as an aggravating offense.

DUI offenders with at least .20% BAC in Minnesota may be given an increased punishment under the “enhanced penalty rule.”

LeRoy got 180 days jail time and two years probation for the offense.

Just goes to show the flexibility of the law. It did not say that it had to be a car or any other common vehicle that you need a license to drive.

It just stated that everyone is prohibited from driving a “vehicle” while under the influence.

In truth, an improvised vehicle like that could even be more dangerous as its crashworthiness has not been tested.

He’s lucky that no one got hurt during the incident or the charges could have been graver.

Thankfully, the damage was limited to the parked car and probably his La-Z-boy.

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While men and troubled young celebrities are most often perceived as the culprits behind the incidence of DUI, you may be surprised to hear that more and more mothers and responsible female executives are getting collared for drunk driving.

The statistics recently released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the FBI reveal that women in the United States drink more and that the gap between drunken-driving arrests among women and men are getting narrower these days.

The spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Rae Tyson said that there are parts in the country where the majority of impaired drivers involved in fatal crashes are female.

Dianne Schuler was described friends and family as a devoted mom and businesswoman but she took 8 lives, including her own in a wrong-way drunken car crash in New York. Autopsy reports also say that she was under the influence of drugs.

Even the daughter of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia pleaded guilty to drunk driving charges when she was stopped by the police after going to McDonald’s with three kids in the car. Another woman caused the death of her daughter’s friend after a night of clubbing.

FBI figures show that nationwide, the number of women arrested for driving under the influence or alcohol or drugs was 28.8 percent higher in 2007 than it was in 1998, while the number of men arrested was 7.5 percent lower.

The rising number of women drunk drivers are attributed to the fact that women are driving more, are behaving as recklessly as men and because of the pressure and recession, more women are getting into excessive drinking, overeating, smoking and drug abuse.

The arrest of drunken mothers with children in the car was even called by Chuck Hurley, CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving as the ultimate form of child abuse.

While women empowerment is ultimately a blessing, the abuse of it can become a curse. Women often lead more stressful lives than men because not only are they now required to have a career, but they must also raise their children well and be loving wives. There is indeed pressure to become a “supermom”.

This in turn, leads to the abuse of substances in an attempt to escape or at least, feel better about the burden they bear as women. And sadly, regardless of intent, women end up making bad choices, like drunk driving and often put their lives and those of their families’ at risk.

Most of the DUI ads and campaigns are directed towards men and teenagers but it’s a good thing that now, the government realizes that female DUI offenders can be just as rampant and fatal.

In this generation where the lines of equality have been blurred, where women are just as empowered and driven as men, inevitably, they are also bound to make the same mistakes. Tragically, supermom or not, they are hardly invincible.

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