Jail for four-times limit lorry driver in Occitanie

Gendarmerie in Balaruc-les-Bains (Hérault) stopped the 41-year-old driver of the 38-ton truck at around midday on July 6, after noticing that he was driving illegally while on the phone.

The patrol then noticed the driver’s state of drunkenness, and upon testing, discovered his blood-alcohol level was at 2.18 grams per litre of blood.

The legal driving limit in France is 0.5g/l.

In a Facebook post, the gendarmerie also confirmed that the driver was found to be driving on a probationary licence after a previous infraction, and the tracker on his truck revealed that he had a history of not respecting the legal limits for driving and rest times for truck drivers.

The driver was later discovered to have travelled from Valence (Drôme, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes), and had been planning on travelling on to Saint-Martin-de-Crau in the Bouches-du-Rhône to drop off his truck, before returning home to the Haute-Savoie.

Instead, his licence was confiscated for a period of six months, and he was summoned to court.

He was then sentenced to 10 months of prison - of which four months will be in a closed jail - followed by a suspended sentence.

His driving licence was cancelled and he will not be permitted to re-pass the test for another 18 months.

His previous conviction for drink-driving - a four-month suspended sentence handed down in the Haute-Savoie on February 13 2017 - was also taken into account and revoked in light of his more recent, more serious conviction.