Drugged driving linked to rash of crashes on American roads
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A sport utility vehicle crashed after all four occupants overdosed on heroin in North Carolina. The same day, a man in Williamsport, Pa., grabbed the steering wheel after his grandson lost consciousness while driving. Police in the city of 30,000 responded to 11 other overdose reports that day, including a woman who crashed her car just before a highway entrance.
The next day in Cleveland, a rescue squad found an unconscious 43-year-old man who had driven off the road and hit a pole. An overdose antidote brought him back around, police say. He was seriously hurt from the crash and was cited for driving under the influence.
Car crashes caused by overdosing drivers are becoming so commonplace, authorities say, that some rescue crews immediately administer the antidote, naloxone, to any unresponsive driver they find at an accident scene.
People who use heroin and related drugs are sometimes so eager to get high, or so sick from withdrawal, that they’ll shoot up in the car as soon as they get their hands on more, police say.
“There’s no waiting period like we used to see with other drugs where you go buy it, then go home and get high, or go to a party and get high,” said Scott Houston, a major with the sheriff ’s office in Pamlico County, N.C., where the SUV crashed June 29. “We don’t see that anymore.”
Two years ago, Koriann Evans had just picked up her 2-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter from her mother’s when her dealer reached out to her. She shot up in a parking lot in Fremont, Ohio, and then headed down the road.
Within a few minutes, she couldn’t breathe. With her children in the back, Evans managed to stop in the middle of the road with her foot on the brake before passing out. Nearby residents pulled her and her children from the car and called authorities. Rescuers told her she would have died quickly without the naloxone she was given.
Now more than two years sober, the 36-year-old Evans works in a vinyl siding factory while trying to become a substance abuse counselor. She lost custody of her children but sees them regularly.
“I knew from that point on that something had to change within me, because the reality is that my addiction, my use, almost killed me, my two kids and possibly somebody else,” Evans said.
Nationally, fatalities in crashes where drugs were involved soared from 2,003 in 1993 to 7,438 in 2015, according to the most recent data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The data reflect only the presence of drugs in a driver, not whether the drugs caused the crash.