George Jones [ tickets ] climbed aboard his tour bus Friday to return home after a thirteen day stay at Nashville's Vanderbilt University Medical Center stemming from a March 6th accident near his home in Franklin, Tennessee. The accident, in which Jones hit a bridge structure, occured as Jones was on a cell phone with his stepdaughter.

Jones, who was not wearing a seatbelt at the time, suffered a punctured lung and a lacerated liver, and was knocked unconscious by the impact. Doctors kept him breathing with the assistance of a ventilator early in his hospital stay.

After reasoning that the crash was due to loss of control while using the phone, investigators turned up a small bottle of vodka, less than half-full, under the passenger seat of Jones' luxury SUV. Based on earlier assumptions about the cause of the accident, no blood-alcohol test was requested by police when Jones was admitted to the hospital. However, hospital procedures did include a full blood test, and police are considering whether to ask prosecutors to subpoena those records.

Police say they received at least two calls from other motorists in the moments before the crash, reporting a man driving erratically as if he was sick or drunk. At least one caller referred to Jones by name.