Driver drinking vodka from 7Up bottle in car crashes into cyclist on bike lane while six times over drink drive limit – and offers victim €2,500 as “token of remorse”

A motorist who was drinking vodka from a 7Up bottle at the wheel when she struck a cyclist from behind on a cycle lane, leaving the rider with concussion and ongoing pain and discomfort, offered him €2,500 as a “token of remorse” before pleading guilty to careless driving.

33-year-old Dubliner Rebecca Griffith was six times over the legal drink drive limit, a reading described as “extraordinarily high” by her defence counsel at Dublin District Court this week, when she crashed into a 34-year-old cyclist on the city’s Malahide Road at around 5pm on 17 August 2023.

The environmental scientist had finished work at Trinity College Dublin at 3pm on the day of the incident, before visiting her sister. After a row broke out, Griffith purchased a bottle of vodka and poured it into a 7Up bottle, which she drank from while behind the wheel of her car, the Irish Examiner reports.

Shortly before 5pm, she struck the cyclist – who was riding in a bus/cycle lane – from behind, sending him over the handlebars and onto the road. Another cyclist assisted the stricken rider, and he was later taken to hospital by ambulance, where was treated for bruising and concussion, undergoing a CAT scan and receiving a tetanus injection.

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The injuries caused the cyclist to miss work for two weeks, and in a victim impact statement he said he was now nervous while cycling, felt vulnerable on the roads, and suffered from occasional flashbacks, while also suffering from ongoing pain and discomfort.

With police officers immediately noticing in the aftermath of the crash that Griffith had consumed alcohol, the sample she provided revealed a reading of 407mg of alcohol per 100ml of urine – over six times the legal limit of 67mg in Ireland.

In Dublin District Court this week, where Griffith pleaded guilty to drink driving and careless driving, defence counsel Emmett Bolan admitted that his client’s drink drive reading was “extraordinarily high” and said she was lucky not to have caused a fatal injury and be facing a more serious charge.

The 33-year-old driver also issued an unreserved apology through her barrister and in a letter brought to court, and offered the cyclist €2,500 as a “token of remorse”.

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Mr Nolan also told the court that Griffith had suffered from a bad alcohol addiction and had been drinking the night before the incident, but added that she was “highly educated and travelled”.

The court heard that she was on antidepressant medication and used alcohol as a coping mechanism, with her family hoping that she would abstain from drinking and engage with counselling and help to deal with the issue.

Pleading for leniency, the barrister asked the court to treat the drink driving collision “as an aberration by a young woman” who had made a significant error in her life, but “otherwise had a lot going for her”.

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However, Judge Grainne Malone expressed concern that someone could “pour a bottle of vodka into themselves and get behind the wheel of a car”, noting that the offence was “at the high end” of the careless driving scale.

Malone, nevertheless, added that Griffith had no previous convictions and was going to counselling. She adjourned sentencing until January in order to wait for a probation report and to hear further information about the compensation awarded in civil proceedings lodged by the injured cyclist.

Griffith was remanded on bail and ordered not to drive while awaiting the sentencing hearing.

While the sentence that awaits this particular drink driver in Dublin is yet to be decided, yesterday we reported that a motorist twice the legal limit for cannabis who hit a cyclist 20 feet into the air, while overtaking another vehicle at a set of traffic lights, causing serious injuries, avoided jail following the shocking crash in Blackburn, also in August 2023.

CCTV footage, shared on Facebook, showed the moment drug driver Danial Arshad lost patience with a stalled motorist and overtook in the lane for oncoming traffic, causing a head-on collision with cyclist Nicholas Cooper.

Arshad pleaded guilty to causing serious injury by careless driving and was sentenced at Preston Crown Court this week to a 10-month sentence, suspended for two years, and received a three-year driving ban.