Metro

Taconic close call

Another very drunk driver was caught going in the wrong direction on the Taconic State Parkway, where eight people were killed in a wrong-way crash in July, police said yesterday.

This time, there was no crash and no casualties.

The driver, Gregorio Peña, 44, of The Bronx, was arrested late Wednesday night after State Police received a report of a wrong-way car on the Taconic.

They found Peña driving a livery cab north in the parkway’s southbound lanes in Yorktown, Westchester County, and pulled him over. He had no passengers.

Peña’s blood-alcohol content was 0.20 percent, 2½ times the legal limit, police said. He was charged with aggravated driving while intoxicated and was to be arraigned last night.

Diane Schuler of West Babylon, LI, the 36-year-old driver who killed herself and seven others in the July crash, was found to have a blood-alcohol content of 0.19 percent. She was driving her minivan south in the northbound lanes of the parkway, about 10 miles south of where Peña was arrested.

Schuler’s daughter, three young nieces and three men in an oncoming SUV were killed in that crash. Her 5-year-old son survived.

Schuler’s husband has refused to accept the autopsy findings that his wife was drunk and high on marijuana, and a second, private autopsy is planned.