Oregon DUI Driver Blows 0.77 on Breathalyzer – Is That a Record?

Authorities say a driver who crashed while on the run from the police in Oregon was found to have a blood alcohol level of 0.77%. The person was drunk at a tissue level.

The unidentified 28-year-old man was pulled over in a Ford Explorer around 1:00 p.m. last Friday near Madras, in central Oregon. Police had been chasing him after receiving a report that he had fled after striking another vehicle at a gas station on the Warm Springs Highway.

When Warm Springs officers caught up to him and stopped him, “they observed the driver to be HIGHLY intoxicated,” said the police in a statement. He reportedly refused to get out of his vehicle, put the SUV back into drive and started off on his merry little way again, with the officers in pursuit.

After about half a mile, he tried to pass another car on the two-lane highway, saw certain death coming his way as he encountered a bunch of oncoming traffic, he then attempted to swerve back into his lane, lost control, whacked a concrete barrier and finally came to a stop.

Get our free mobile app

Criminal charges are certain to be filed once the driver is cleared from the hospital, taken there for a medical evaluation.

The blood alcohol level of 0.77% was more than NINE times Oregon’s legal limit.

A BAC of .10 means that an individual's blood supply contains one part alcohol for every 1000 parts blood. Severe intoxication is the classification for someone registering between 0.25% and 0.3%, between 0.35% to 0.4%, a person would typically lose consciousness and be on the brink of a coma. Experts say anything north of 0.4 is sure to bring the possibility of death into the equation.

Factors that can impact a person’s blood-alcohol level include the number of drinks and the amount of time in which they were consumed, the individual’s body weight, water composition, their sex, medication, how much food they've eaten and tolerance to booze's overall effects and affects built up over a long drinking career.

Roughly 29 people in the U.S. die in car crashes each day that involve an alcohol-impaired driver, that's basically one every 50 minutes.

Answering the question in the headline, no, 0.77% is not even close to the highest BAC (blood alcohol content) ever recorded. Try 0.914 on for size, and the 67-year old Bulgarian man was relatively coherent when five different samples were taken, each registering basically the same reading, and there was nothing wrong with the device, it was functioning properly. Holy Tolerance, Batman!