One Injured in Suspected DUI Crash on Highway 101

California Highway Patrol officers in Marin arrested 12 drivers on suspicion of driving under the influence and responded to three DUI-related crashes during the long Thanksgiving weekend.  

One person was injured in an early Sunday morning crash involving three cars on northbound Highway 101, just south of Paradise Drive near Corte Madera.

Petr Fedorovich Tcherniavski, 62, of San Francisco, came to a complete stop on Highway 101 just before 12:14 a.m. on Nov. 25, according to California Highway Patrol Sgt. Marcus Bartholomew.

“He stopped his car to retrieve something inside the vehicle,” Bartholomew said.

Abdullah Ganani, 47, of Novato, was driving a 1996 Mercedes sedan and hit the stopped 1998 Honda CRV Tcherniavski was driving. Next, Brian Degnan, a 20-year-old from San Rafael, crashed the 2005 Toyota Prius he was driving into the Mercedes.

Degnan may have broken his wrist in the crash, according to Bartholomew, and had a family member pick him up from the crash scene to seek medical treatment.

The collision briefly closed three lanes on the highway, Bartholomew said.

Tcherniavski was arrested on suspicion of DUI and is facing felony charges because the accident involved an injury, Bartholomew said. Tcherniavski, who is unemployed, was taken to Marin General Hospital for medical clearance before officers booked him into the Marin County Jail in lieu of $50,000.

The two other DUI crashes involved Novato woman who were both arrested on suspicion of DUI.

On Wednesday, Nov. 21, at 4:15 p.m., Carolyn Klipin-Miller, 65, crashed her 1995 Jaguar sedan on the transition from southbound Highway 101 to California State Route 37 in Novato.

“For unknown reasons she veered to the right and collided into the concrete rail,” Bartholomew said. She wasn’t injured in the crash.

On Thanksgiving, Nov. 22, Kit Gockle, 54, was driving a 1989 Acura Legend in Novato on Via Escondita when she hit a parked 2009 Honda Civic around 4:20 p.m., just north of Calle Paseo. She wasn’t injured, according to Bartholomew.

Officials from several jurisdictions in Marin announced they were cracking down on impaired drivers during Thanksgiving weekend. Information about the number of DUI arrests made for the entire Avoid 13 Marin County DUI Taskforce coalition will be available later this week, according to San Rafael Police officials.

Thanksgiving weekend generally creates a busy weekend for the CHP, Bartholomew said.

“College kids come back to town to visit mom and dad, and all the high school kids are out and there’s all the people traveling and coming through Marin,” he said.

This year, statewide CHP statistics showed fewer DUI arrests but more fatalities than for the same period in 2011.

“It’s hard to say why that statistics are like that. It could be we were so busy assisting motorists and working the fatality collisions that we didn’t have as many DUI arrests,” Bartholomew said.

There were at least a dozen traffic fatalities in northern California, according to California Beat.

There was one traffic fatality in Marin over the weekend. A 53-year-old man was pronounced dead after he crashed his car in Tiburon, according to the Marin Independent Journal.