How Not to Drive a Vehicle
There are an almost endless number of ways to drive a vehicle in a negligent manner. In a state of naked ambition, twenty three-year old Nicole Smith of Council Bluffs, Iowa recently set out to do almost all of them. At once. Ms. Smith was apparently driving while intoxicated, in the nude, without date tags and with no insurance early Saturday morning when she lost control of her Dodge Durango and slammed into a 1998 Honda and a 1999 Saturn, knocking the cars into a 2002 Ford Ranger. If you are keeping count that is one driver, four wrecked vehicles, zero clothing. The police arrived and she told them that she had been drinking and just wanted to go home. She was taken to the hospital and then released with multiple citations.
Driving under the influence is a method of negligent driving that has been discussed repeatedly on this blog. However, driving in one’s birthday suit is not a topic that comes up with much frequency. Negligence in Tennessee is defined as driving in a manner that a reasonably prudent person would not. For a myriad of reasons, the prudent driver will not drive around in the buff.
Just assume, hypothetically speaking, that you decided to drive around naked and went into a drunken rampage taking out multiple vehicles. You would then be forced to get out of the car wearing the clothes God gave you and speak to the police, victims, or emergency personnel. Also, driving around au naturel is very likely to cause a disturbance on the roadway, distracting other drivers, which may lead to automobile accidents. While Tennessee negligence law is pretty bare on the subject, there seems to be no authority indicating that driving while disrobed cannot constitute negligence by distracting other drivers and leading to automobile accidents.
Causing an accident in this manner will lead to the party at fault being responsible for any actual damages caused by such conduct. Needless to say that if you are streaking down the highway in a state of nature you have the potential to distract a lot of people, which can cause a major accident if it causes other drivers to take their eyes off the road for even a second. Drivers in Tennessee should aspire to keep our roadways nudity free, which will help to avoid accidents and personal injury lawsuits.
Source: http://www.radioiowa.com/2009/11/29/police-say-naked-driver-ran-suv-into-3-parked-vehicles/
