Just thank God he was wearing his seatbelt. Everybody, please heed that warning.
Nothing incites bodily violence quicker than a Duke fan turning in your direction and saying 'scoreboard.'
I see. They probably would have been more insistent if other people had been hurt. But around here if you refuse a request your license is gone for a year. Probably some celebrity privilege involved, in a bad wreck they almost always want it. You can't act "normal" after having just gone through that.
Amazing how far we've come in car safety since Ralph Nader's early days.
His being a celebrity would not have been a factor in whether law enforcement sought a blood draw. This is LA. We have celebrities large and small driving drunk on a regular basis. Of course not all of them, but plenty of them are arrested and charged and prosecuted and they quietly plead guilty and move on.
And we too have the provision where if you refuse to give breath or blood you lose your license for awhile.
Reports I have read have Tiger awake and communicative at the scene. There is no saying what he did or didn't do and he was most certainly in shock.
As for CA law, I was able to find this article. Apparently CA is an "implied consent" state, in that when you agree to a driver's license you agree to testing whenever the cops feel it is necessary.
https://jdlaw.law/blog/are-police-al...ident-suspect/
I'm not a Tiger fan but I hate that this happened and I hope that he can recover enough to be somewhat normal. Whether he golfs competitively or not is just a nice to have IMHO. He's young and hopefully has a long relatively healthy life ahead of him. Anytime I hear of injuries like his, I always hope that they can keep infections under control (thinking about you Alex Smith and you Grant Hill). Anyway, here's hoping he comes through this as well as possible.
Yes we are an “implied consent” state but that doesn’t prevent a driver from
nevertheless refusing the police’s request for a blood or breath sample. It just means the driver will lose his license and also the fact of the refusal not only can be used against him as “consciousness of guilt” evidence at trial, but also increases the penalties if he is convicted.
The US Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that in most cases, if a drunk driving suspect refuses to give consent for a blood draw, police must obtain a search warrant to take the blood.
I live about 3 miles from the accident site but don't go down that road very often. It is very steep and there are warning signs. You need to be very cautious going down the road.
My understanding is that there are accidents there fairly frequently.
SoCal
He was born just a few days after Mrs. CNC (on opposite sides of the country) and is less than a year younger than me. He won his first Masters while I was at Duke - seems like he has been around forever...
From a golfing perspective, he is at the back end of his prime, so this will likely close the door on that. But right now, golf is the least of his concerns - I hope he has a speedy recovery.
men folk often drive too fast
Here's the latest and best news from the horse's (chief medical officer at the hospital) and expert's (a doctor explains) mouths I've seen.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/gol...z7q?li=BBnb7Kz
Perhaps he was trying out the autopilot feature.
-jk
CA can definitely suspend his driving privileges in CA. After that it gets kind of messy. If CA and FL are compact states, then the CA suspension should result in a FL suspension. If not, his ability to drive after CA suspends his CA driving privileges is going to vary by state (note: IANAL, I'm sure someone will explain this more completely and correctly than I just did).
I am not a doctor, just a mother of three active boys who had a lot of bad fractures, including an open and comminuted tibia fracture and a comminuted fracture of the talus, which is an ankle bone. Hopefully an orthopedic surgeon can comment with more authority, but this is what I understand from our experience:
An open fracture is obviously very serious and susceptible to infection.
A comminuted fracture is also quite serious, especially if there are a lot of parts. It could need to be put back together like a puzzle, with screws and plates to hold the pieces in place (which Tiger’s was). If that fracture was also an open fracture, pieces could be missing (that happened to my son...fortunately he was young and it healed even though pieces were missing).
Even a simple ankle break can be serious because circulation is poorer in the lower extremities. If that break was a comminuted fracture, that could also add to the complication because of the chance of bone death due to poor circulation (this also happened to my son).
Add all these things together with multiple fractures to his legs and ankles, and he will have a long road to recovery.
The fact that it is his right ankle may be the only good news from a golf perspective. But thankfully he survived this terrible accident.
Last edited by Tooold; 02-24-2021 at 01:11 PM.