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A man was found passed out behind the wheel of his car after he drove drunk and crashed into another car, killing a mother of one in Qingdao, Shandong province.

The man, surnamed Wang, was injured and is now in hospital. Police will detain him when he is released, local newspaper Qilu Evening News reported yesterday.

The 35-year-old female victim, surnamed Sun, was a worker in a factory in Qingdao and is the mother of a two-year-old boy.

She was killed last Thursday afternoon as she traveled in a car with four friends and two children. As they were waiting for the green light at an intersection, Wang's Jeep allegedly lost control and collided with her car.

Seven other people were injured in the collision, two of them severely. They are all in the hospital.

Wang's blood test showed that his alcohol content was 243 milligrams per 100 milliliters, three times higher than the standard for drunk driving.

Wang later said that he and his friend Liang drank a lot of liquor at lunch that day before driving to a construction site for business. On the way back, he ran into Sun's car at the intersection.

This is the latest case of drunk driving resulting in death.

Last month, Fu Cheng, a local official in charge of legal affairs, drove while drunk, killing three and injuring eight in Zhengzhou, Henan province. He was charged with endangering public safety on Monday and is now in criminal detention.

Fu was also found driving without a license that day. He first ran into two people, tried to escape, then ran into another two, and finally stopped after he knocked down 11 people.

Another accident that aroused wide social response was in Nanjing, Jiangsu province on June 30 when Zhang Mingbao killed five pedestrians, including a pregnant woman.

Zhang, 43, is a deputy general manager of a local real estate company. Tests after the accident showed that his blood alcohol content was 381 milligrams per 100 milliliters.

Nanjing police started a campaign the following day to crack down on drunk driving. In two days, the police announced they had caught 297 people who were driving drunk.

Another drunk driver, Sun Weiming, a 30-year-old company executive in Chengdu, Sichuan province, was sentenced to death on July 23, accused of endangering public safety. Sun killed four people and injured one last year.

Sun is China's first drunk driver to be charged with "endangering public safety" and sentenced to death.

The increase in high-profile alcohol-related accidents recently has triggered calls for harsher penalties.

In China, the charge of a "traffic offense resulting in death" has a maximum punishment of seven years in prison.

According to the Ministry of Health, road accidents are one of the main causes of death in China. In the first six months of this year, close to 30,000 people died on the roads, despite a 10.5 percent drop year-on-year.

（英語點津 Helen 編輯）

About the broadcaster:

Nancy Matos is a foreign expert at China Daily Website. Born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, Nancy is a graduate of the Broadcast Journalism and Media program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Her journalism career in broadcast and print has taken her around the world from New York to Portugal and now Beijing. Nancy is happy to make the move to China and join the China Daily team.