The angry brother of a man killed by a diabetic driver ‘having an eposode’.

Yes and no. There are some cases where you can use medical reasons to get out of cases. However, that also highly depends on the severity of the case.

If the person gets behind the wheel of the car and kills someone it would be a long drawn out case. The prosecution would have a strong case and the entire time media would be making diabetics look worse than we are. Here are some strong stances the prosecution would have…

1) How long have you been diabetic? Depending on the time frame, you may not have a case to stand on using you didn’t know.

2) How long have you had a driver’s license? If you are diabetic, most states require you to inform the BMV in that state. Failure to do so may result in you getting your license suspended from court. This will also add to your neglect.

3) Did you test your blood sugar before driving? I have not met a doctor that does not recommend that and I strongly encourage it. Even for a 2 minute drive. A car to a diabetic is like a gun to a sharpshooter. While the chances are very slim anything can go wrong, both are a deadly weapon at the wrong time.

The prosecution would have a strong case for at least vehicular homicide. Then once you get out of that court case, then you have the civil court case to deal with for the death. And even if you win one case, you may lose the other (that’s what happened to OJ Simpson.)

Sorry to get off topic, but wanted to clear that up.

As for the arrest,if the police were so ignorant that they don’t recognize hypoglycemia, it’s expecting too much to think they wouldn’t arrest. Hopefully the prosecutor has half a brain and will dismiss the case.

Or does the law hold us liable for the things we do while we are medically incapacitated??? For example, if a hypoglycemic episode caused a fatal car accident, is the diabetic driver liable?

M who has PCOS which is like pre-diabetes but worse.

The point is, Type 1 diabetics CANNOT replace a pancreas with insulin injections, and we should not blame the victim for having this severe, non-preventable genetic autoimmune condiiton. We wouldn’t blame someone with congestive heart failure for having a heart attack, so why should we charge a Type 1 diabetic for having a *documented* low blood sugar?

It’s well known in the medical communities that long standing Type 1 diabetes and tight control of said diabetes raises the risk for hypoglycemic unawareness. And we also know that some diabetics get violent due to hypoglycemia, not even being *aware* or in control of their actions. The brain does not act the way it should in abscence of sufficient glucose or oxygen.

Perhaps what needs to be blamed is the TREATMENT of Type 1 diabetes and the failure of the medical community. Instead of blaming the victim for trying to survive and control his disease, perhaps we should work harder to CURE it, and stop the horrible issues it causes.

While I understand that precautions need to be taken, I think that any officer/Rent a Cop who freaks out without considering all options:

a) Is not intelligent/calm/insightful/observant enough to have that job. Panic and failing to properly assess a situation does not help the public.

b) Does not understand that the job they signed up to due requires some risk (i.e. Use some force to subdue someone, but don’t beat an obviously ill man senseless).

c) Does not understand basic medical situations they may encounter, or know when the situation is out of their league and the paramedics should be called. Provided Mr.U was not trying to harm anyone else and was simply reaching for a Coke at the candy stand, I can’t see why any of this happened.

I find it hard to believe someone would think he was drunk when he did not smell like even a drop of alcohol.

While “diabetics” are imperfect people at times too, the vast majority of Type 1 diabetics are fighting to simply continuing living every day. We don’t need people trying to stop us from helping ourselves. We don’t need people assuming we are drunk and letting us fall into a coma because they were to lazy to look for a medical alert bracelet. It’s apparent that the *average* citizen and/or Type 2 diabetic will never have any clue of how hard it is to manage this disease.

In this day and age, this should not be happening. Due to the explosion of Type 2 diabetes, no one remembers what Type 1 is or the severity of it. They all think about their “Aunt Bessie” who had to simply “watch her diet” and “stay away from sugar”.

If someone attacks a police officer they are going to jail. The process of going to jail means charges are then assigned to the person. You CANNOT put someone in jail if they ARE NOT under arrest and charges ARE NOT ASSIGNED against them. I’m not sure if Mr. Universe went to jail or not as the media hasn’t said that. He could have been arrested and released. Also, when was the life squad called? And even if they arrived at the time of the original incident the prior incident still took place with him assualting the officer.

So…now we know he’s diabetic…what do you do? Do you know for a 100% fact that the reason he assualted the police officer was because of the low? If so, dang, I’ll keep that in mind and when I want to fight someone just purposely run slightly low. Do you see the problem that causes? If the polcie let him go, then it would be allowing any diabetic a reason to fight. And don’t tell me all 24 million known diabetics are perfect citizens cause you know that’s bull as well as I do.

So the solution is arrest the person, cite them to court, and let the courts figure it out. Remember, a charge of arrest does not mean guilty. It means at the time the facts made one look guilty, then the courts straighten it out to what truely happened. We don’t have time at the scene of an incident to verify and call lab techs and medical doctors to what truely caused him to lunge at police.

You have to look at what happened at that time and what precident a wrong action could cause in the future. Would more training to police help? Yes, but there are millions of medical conditions and not enough funding in the country for police to be trained on everything.

Amy Tenderich, author of the Diabetes Mine blog, writes about the difficulties that the law enforcement has in recognizing someone with diabetic hypoglycemia. I have been thinking about this for quite some time. While I have had only a few scary lows…