by Rod Hughes

Here it is, not even New Year’s Eve yet, and already 40 drivers have had their cars confiscated because of inebriation—Including one who set a new record: 4 milligrams of alcohol per liter of blood, fully four times the .49 level to legally drive.

A 29-year-old man named Camacho was stopped Wednesday at a roadblock at Plaza Gonzalez Viquez just south of downtown San Jose. When he said he did not know how to exhale into the breathaliser, the cops showed him. But Camacho refused to accept the results, claiming the machine was “rigged.’

Police took a blood test but Traffic Police director German Marin says he cannot give an exact figure. “”These aparatuses do not register higher than four milligrams… because it’s assumed that any higher will induce coma.” By then, even the traffic cops could not trust the results, so an officer accompanied Camacho in taxi to a nearby private hospital, Clinica Biblica, for another blood test, which confirmed the incredible figure.

Camacho signed a release at the hospital to abandon his Honda Accord, which was towed away to a police compund. Camacho went home by taxi.

(At least, we presime Camacho went home and not to another bar. He could have explained to police that he had to drive—he was too drunk to walk!)