Weaving Driver Can Explain--He’s Blind

A patrolman who expected to find an intoxicated motorist when he pulled over a weaving Thunderbird instead saw dark glasses on the face of the driver, who turned out to be blind.

“I didn’t believe him at first,” Patrolman R. L. Farney said. “I asked him why he was driving if he was blind. He told me the girl he was driving with was drunker than he was.”

Farney spotted the car as it weaved across three lanes of Canal Drive about 3 a.m. Tuesday. “It almost ran me off the road,” the officer said.

When he stopped the car, the driver, Mark A. Daniels, 24, of Portsmouth, Va., was wearing dark glasses. Daniels told Farney that he has been blind since he was 12. He said the woman with him, Kelly Pelton, 20, had been directing him as they drove home from a tavern.

“He thought he was driving OK,” Farney said. But the car narrowly missed a tree and a telephone pole, Farney said.

Daniels was charged with drunken driving, reckless driving and driving without a license. Pelton was charged with being drunk in public and allowing an unlicensed person to drive.