DESIGNATED DRIVER

She was only following all those TV public service ads which tell you to chose a designated driver who is not going to drink when you’re going out to drink. Why doesn’t the judge appreciate that?

DRUNK WOMAN WHO HELD SON, 12, ON HER LAP AND LET HIM DRIVE HOME IS BRANDED ‘EVIL’ BY JUDGE
By David Gardner
　
Mail Online
November 5, 2010
　
A mother claimed she was acting responsibly when she decided she was too drunk to drive.
　
But Misty McCollister, 35, was arrested after she came up with an even more dangerous alternative - putting her 12-year-old son behind the wheel.
　
McCollister told a judge in Minden, Nevada, that a woman friend refused to drive because she had forgot her glasses.
　
So she put her son on her lap so he was high enough to see through the windscreen of her brown Buick and told him to get them home.

The Gardnerville Record-Courier reported that the mother was arrested a few streets away from her home last month after another motorist saw her car weaving in and out of its lane and varying its speed.
　
Also in the car was another child, aged seven.
　
McCollister pleaded guilty to attempted child abuse or neglect and could face up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Her sentencing is on December 14.
　
She reportedly told police she was a recovering alcoholic who had fallen off the wagon and had been drinking all weekend before the incident.
　
She was found to have a breath-alcohol content of .299, so high that she required a medical clearance to be taken into custody.

McCollister blamed a friend for insisting that she took him home first.
　
She said: ‘He kept pressuring me to take him home. He drove himself home, and we were in the car. I was pretty much passed out all the way.
　
‘He pulled into his driveway and just left us there. There was another lady with us, but she didn't have her glasses, so she refused to drive.
　
'I had my son get on my lap and drive us.'
　
But Judge Dave Gamble said there was no excuse for her ‘absolute evilness’.
　
The Judge added: ‘You just gave me the identities of three or four people whose fault this was, and none of it was yours.
　
‘As long as you think this was anyone else's fault but yours, I have no reason to show any leniency toward you.
　
‘All that conspired from your perspective to force you to commit felony child abuse. That's nonsense. Next time you're in here, I hope I don't hear a pocketful of excuses for the absolute evilness and irrationality of putting your son on your lap while you're drunk and driving you home.’