It’s game over for a man who tried claiming that he wasn’t driving impaired in Dartmouth, but he’d been up for 24 hours playing video games.
A judge convicted Gregory Bacon of impaired driving in the July 11, 2018 case when he crashed his car into two telephone poles around 5:30 a.m. on the Forest Hills Parkway in Cole Harbour. But Bacon claimed it wasn’t the alcohol and cocaine he’d consumed the previous day that affected his driving.
“It is his position that the accident was caused by the fact that he had not slept in 24 hours, as he stayed up all night playing video games with a friend and he simply fell asleep at the wheel of his vehicle,” Dartmouth provincial court judge Theodore Tax said in a written decision released Wednesday.
“While he acknowledged during his testimony that, during the previous day, he had consumed some alcohol and cocaine, he maintained that neither the alcohol nor the cocaine had any impact on his ability to operate his motor vehicle.”
People spotted Bacon’s black Hyundai that morning “weaving and drifting in the lanes on the road and then went off the roadway, colliding with and breaking two telephone poles located on the side of the Parkway,” Tax said.
Bacon passed a breathalyzer test at the Cole Harbour RCMP detachment, but the investigating officer called in a drug recognition expert.
“A person following Mr. Bacon’s vehicle, immediately called 911 and an RCMP officer arrived on scene within minutes.”
Ian Paterson was on his way to Halifax Stanfield International Airport that morning when he spotted Bacon’s car, with no lights, drift off the road and slam into two telephone poles at the intersection of Taranaki Drive.
“Mr. Paterson immediately stopped and noticed that the driver and sole occupant of the vehicle had got out of the car and went to look at the front end of the car. Mr. Paterson said that the driver seemed to be ‘disoriented’ and added that when he asked the driver if he was okay, the driver replied that he was ‘slightly disoriented,’” said the judge. “On cross examination, Mr. Paterson agreed that when the EHS personnel and ambulance arrived on the scene, the driver also told them that he felt ‘all right and was just shaken up and disoriented.’”
A police officer showed up five minutes after the crash. He didn’t smell booze on Bacon, but the driver “was having a difficult time to avoid falling asleep, his eyes were bloodshot, and they rolled when he spoke to him. Mr. Bacon was unsteady on his feet and had to steady himself by putting a hand on the car,” said the decision.
Bacon told the officer he’d been up all night playing video games with a friend.
“Mr. Bacon was ‘very dopey’ when he spoke with him, his eyes were rolling back in his head and he kept falling asleep,” said the decision.
Bacon passed a breathalyzer test at the Cole Harbour RCMP detachment, but the investigating officer called in a drug recognition expert.
The expert, Halifax Regional Police Const. Christopher Hansen, put Bacon through a series of 12 tests. Hansen formed “the opinion that Mr. Bacon was under the influence of a central nervous system depressant as well as alcohol which impaired his ability to operate a motor vehicle.”
A urine test showed Bacon had lorazepam, an anti-anxiety drug known by the trade name Ativan, and cocaine in his system, but a toxicologist testified that only confirms prior drug use and the effects could have worn off by the time Bacon crashed.
The judge found that Bacon “voluntarily and consciously assumed care and control of his motor vehicle and through a lack of rest or any sleep, the recent consumption of some alcohol, lorazepam and cocaine placed himself in an extremely fatigued position, likely causing him to fall asleep at the wheel of his vehicle.”
The judge sentenced Bacon, 23, to one day in custody and suspended his driver’s licence for a year.
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