Fall out Friday: That Drunk Driving Crash Caught Up To Him

Most people involved in a drunk driving crash will stay at the scene and accept what happens next. Depending on their blood alcohol concentration (BAC) they might not be very coherent or know what’s going on around them, but for the most part they’ll stay to be arrested, visit the hospital, and go to jail if required.

Not very many people manage to walk away from a crash with no repercussions at all, but if they do they could find that the fallout from a drunk driving crash could catch up with them one way or another. One Colorado man learned that the hard way after he thought he got away with his own drunk driving crash free and clear.

Colin Buchanan caused a crash in June of 2015 in which he collided head on with a jeep. Thankfully no one involved was killed, and when police arrived he told them he’d only had one drink that night. He refused the breathalyzer, wouldn’t do a field sobriety test, and although the arresting police officer asked for a blood draw, it took six hours after the crash to draw his blood. Turns out takes your body two hours to process one drink, so by that time he had a minimal amount of alcohol in his system.

During his trial he pleaded not guilty to his charges, but that defense only held up until, just a few days before his trail concluded, he was overhead by a detective when he was talking to someone at a marijuana dispensary. He was bragging and laughing about how he was drunk at the time of the crash, and that was an huge tactical error on his part because he forced to own up and switch his plea to guilty. Now that he’s spending 400 days in jail, he’ll have a long time to think about his drunk driving crash and wonder why he didn’t plead guilty in the first place.

The moral of this Friday Fallout? This offender in this case would probably tell you that if you drink and drive, one way or another, you’ll pay the price.