A man has been arrested in Knaresborough after reporting himself to police for drink-driving.
North Yorkshire police said they received a call shortly before midday on Monday from a man who said he was “drink-driving and doesn’t know what he is doing”.
The man, in his 50s, told the 999 call handler that he was in the Knaresborough area of North Yorkshire and that he had had a heavy weekend, police added.
Officers located his vehicle, a black transit van, within 15 minutes and the man was arrested after a breath test found he was more than three times over the legal limit.
The roadside breath test recorded the driver at 118; the legal limit in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is 35 micrograms per 100 millilitres of breath. In Scotland, it is 22 micrograms.
The man was arrested and remained in custody.
Posting about the incident on social media, North Yorkshire police said: “Man calls the police to report that HE is a drink-driver!
“Well it’s not every day that this happens … a suspected drink-driver dobs themselves in to the police.”
A similar incident took place in the US in March last year when a driver who had a blood-alcohol level twice the legal limit called police to report someone driving on the wrong side of the road – unaware that it was actually himself in the wrong lane.
In a call to police he said someone “almost ran me off the road”, but when officers attended the scene they discovered the caller was on the wrong side of the road and was intoxicated.
Lancaster county sheriff’s office said it was able to arrest the man before anyone was seriously hurt.
