Under normal circumstances, we would say we don’t know how many drinks it would take for someone to drive in the wrong direction on the highway. But for one teenage driver in Florida, we actually do know how high his blood-alcohol level needed to be for him to crash straight into oncoming traffic. And while it was found to be well past the standard BAC legal limit for a driver in the state, the figure is even more egregious because he was under 21.
19-year-old driver had a blood-alcohol level well past the legal limit
On September 14 at around 2:27 a.m., 19-year-old Gabriel Alexander Markaj from Orlando crashed into another vehicle while driving the wrong way on Interstate 75 and arrested by Florida Highway Patrol, according to a report by Ocala News.
Video footage shared by local outlet WESH 2, courtesy of Florida Highway Patrol, comes from dashcam evidence from the vehicle that was struck. It shows a driver going northbound on I-75 for about ten seconds before spotting the headlights of a car heading toward them in the middle lane. Caught off-guard, the driver swerves to the left and attempts to change lanes, but is unable to avoid an accident. It shows Markaj striking the right rear-end of the vehicle, making a loud bang in the collision.
Prior to the accident, law enforcement had issued a BOLO (“be-on-the-lookout”) alert for a vehicle that was moving southbound and weaving in and out of traffic through multiple northbound lanes.
According to FHP troopers, the suspect’s vehicle sustained heavy damage to its front-right side and stopped while facing southbound. The other car had spun clockwise on the road after the crash and blocked the northbound off-ramp to State Road 26. During the investigation, the driver of the struck vehicle provided law enforcement with the dashcam footage for evidentiary review.
The teenager was then arrested and booked into the Alachua County Jail, where he provided a pair of breath samples to determine his blood alcohol level. The first registered a .190 and the second registered a .176. For context, the standard legal limit for an adult driver in Florida is 0.08, but this limit is different for drivers under the age of 21. For a teenage driver, the legal limit is much lower at 0.02, meaning that Markaj was roughly nine times over the threshold for a DUI.
Markaj has been charged with a DUI with property damage or personal injury, a DUI with a blood-alcohol level of .150 or higher, driving on the wrong side of a divided highway, and unauthorized use or possession of an altered driver’s license or identification card.
