A slice of life in rural America. . .

Tractor driver booked for DUI

Arlington man's rig allegedly was all over the road

The Herald link

ARLINGTON -- It's a story that started with cars, bikes and planes. It ended Thursday when an Arlington man was arrested for allegedly driving a tractor while drunk. The man, 59, was booked into the Snohomish County Jail for investigation of driving under the influence, Washington State Patrol trooper Kirk Rudeen said. "This is the first time I've been working that we've had a DUI on a tractor," the 18-year veteran trooper said.

The whole thing started when a man flagged down a trooper to say he thought someone was driving drunk. He told the trooper he'd helped a man pull his car out of a ditch. About an hour later, he saw the same man with the same car in a different ditch. Police dispatched a State Patrol airplane to look for the suspected drunken driver and troopers in the air quickly zeroed in on the Kubota tractor, Rudeen said.

The tractor was swerving all over the road, he said. "The guy almost went into the ditch again driving the tractor," Rudeen said. By the time troopers caught up with the man about 12:45 p.m. near Rose Road and 288th Street NW, he had a strong odor of alcohol on his breath, Rudeen said.

Police think this is what happened. The man drove his car into a ditch for the second time that morning. He walked home. He got his tractor and used it to pull the car out of the ditch. After driving his car home, the man hopped on a bicycle and pedaled back to retrieve the tractor.

The man was at the wheel of the tractor, swerving along a country road, when troopers found him, Rudeen said. Driving a huge piece of farm machinery while drunk is no laughing matter, Rudeen said.
n accident between a car and the tractor likely would have been catastrophic, he said.

"A front-end loader is not going to give like a car would. It's going to peel the car open like a can opener, not to mention what's going to happen to the occupant," Rudeen said.

The man was cited and booked into the county jail Thursday afternoon. He was being held on $5,000 bail. "This is a person we definitively needed to get off the roadway," Rudeen said.