“Snow Plowing While Intoxicated” in OBay

A 30-year-old Oyster Bay man, Deyvi Castillo-Chavarria of 155 Berry Hill Road, Oyster Bay was arrested at on Monday, Feb. 1 after allegedly driving his snow plow truck erratically down Route 106 while intoxicated.

According to Nassau County Police, Castillo-Chavarria, 30 was traveling southbound on Route 106, when officers, traveling in an unmarked vehicle, saw his oncoming snow plow swerving and veering across into their lane nearly cause a collision with their car.

When pulled over, Castillo-Chavarria smelled strongly of alcohol, and was obviously intoxicated, according to police. He was placed under arrest without further incident.

"Driving while intoxicated is a serious crime, but snow plowing while intoxicated increases the danger to the public,' observed one Nassau police officer. A driver with a Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) of 0.08% is considered "alcohol impaired" under NYS law.

Castillo-Chavarria has been charged with driving while intoxicated and other traffic law violations and was arraigned on Feb 2nd.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration there are roughly 11,000 yearly fatalities in the United States caused by drunk drivers, accounting for about one third of all traffic accident fatalities.

New York and California are among the worst states in this regard with NY having 295 such drunk driving fatalities out of 657 traffic accident fatalities and California with 1120 out of 2275. Vermont and Alaska had the least with 18 out of 48, and 22 out of 55, respectively.

Nassau and Suffolk counties were criticized in a recent New York Times article as having "the worst record for drunk driving fatalities" of all New York counties. But when fact-checked, it turned out that when factoring in the amount of registered vehicles, amount of drivers and population density, the three upstate counties of St Lawrence, Seneca and Saratoga all had worse DWI records.