Georgia Woman Charged with DUI after Colliding with a School Bus
Lisa Mills, a 22-year-old woman from Georgia, Atlanta was charged with reckless driving, DUI, and for driving on the wrong side of roadway. She caused a head on collision with a charter bus that was transporting 29 cheerleaders, two adult sponsors, and a school counsellor from Bullitt Central High School to Orlando, for a competition.
Mills was driving a 2015 Kia Optima the wrong way on Interstate 75 and collided with the bus near exit 259, close to the I-75/I-285 interchange.
No fatalities
Fortunately, no one was injured in the bus because the people in the bus are the innocent ones in this crash, according to Keith Davis, the Superintendent of Buillitt County Public School, while Mills was taken to Grady Hospital by ground ambulance to treat minor injuries.
The Georgia State Patrol received a call at 1:53 am about the vehicle headed the wrong way on Interstate 75, according to the public information officer for the Georgia Department of Public Safety, Tracey Watson.
The cheerleaders in the bus were picked up by other buses that were travelling to Orlando carrying cheerleaders from Bullitt East, LaRue County and Ballard High Schools, after the operator of these buses, John Miller contacted them notifying them of the crash at around 2:15 am.
A Drop in DUIs in Georgia
Atlanta drunk driving accident attorneys believe there could be many reasons why DUI convictions in Georgia have increased significantly in the past five years. However, many people are also refusing to take a sobriety test, which perhaps is influencing the number of convictions. Data shows that around 11,480 people refused the test, as compared to 5,608 people who did not take the sobriety test in 2008.
There were just 32,514 convictions in 2013, while in 2008 there were 44,017 convictions. These were the figures presented to state lawmakers by the Department of Driver Services, according to Atlanta drunk driving accident attorneys.
Refuse to get tested
It is difficult to convict a person with a DUI, if he or she refuses to get tested, according to Barry Martin, state executive director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Americans increasingly are being made aware of the dangers of drunken driving, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving is one organization that is well known for its awareness campaigns.
It is amazing that America and the state of Georgia for that matter allows people to refuse to take the test. If someone is terrorizing other people on the roadways their rights in this regard seem to be secondary.
The Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility, a research organization funded by a distillery, reported that deaths due to drunken driving was at 3.2 per 100,000 population in 2013, which is a decrease of 65% since 1982. Georgia has a rate of 3.0, below the national figures. Only 1.4 percent of Georgians admitted to driving after drinking excessively, as compared to 1.9 percent in the entire nation.
Katie Fallon, the spokeswoman for the Office of Highway Safety, has said that while the data on drunken driving is still incomplete for the years 2013 and 2014, and are yet to be certified, the percentage of deaths due to DUI were 25 in Georgia in 2012, and would likely be the same in 2013 and 2014.
