The District Court in Karlovo canceled the sanctions on the grounds that it was a matter of extreme necessity, but will consider the case again
A driver caught driving in the village of Anevo to Sopot with 1.02 parts per million of alcohol explained that he had to pick up his sick mother-in-law from the hospital in Karlovo and there was no one else to do it. After midnight on November 17, his wife’s nephew called and explained that his grandmother was taken by ambulance to the Karlovo Emergency Center, but that she would not be hospitalized and that private transportation had to be found. The grandmother’s son-in-law was unable to find a taxi and got into his car, took her from the emergency room and drove to her house in the village of Rozino, where her medicines were. At 2:05 a.m. they were stopped for inspection in Anevo. The dredger stated that he had been drinking, the driver did not deny it and did not ask for a blood sample.
He was fined BGN 1,000 and deprived of his driver’s license for 1 year, but contested the criminal decree. The Karlovy Vary District Court overruled it on the grounds that in this case there was a so-called extreme necessity. “Avoiding the immediate danger to the patient’s health and life necessitated the violation of traffic rules,” the decision states. A subsequent appeal by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Administrative Court in Plovdiv returned the case for a new examination by another panel of the first instance, in order to check again whether there really was no other option for transporting the sick mother-in-law.
This decision is final.