A western Quebec woman has been charged with impaired driving after a car carrying four children allegedly came close to colliding head-on with another vehicle.

The woman, 42, from Déléage, Que., about 100 kilometres north of Gatineau, appeared in court Tuesday after being arrested Monday night on Highway 105 near Shouldice Road, north of Wakefield, Que. She had been stopped at about 10:45 p.m. ET after she was spotted by two off-duty police officers.

"The lady was driving all over the place," said Martin Fournel, spokesman for the Des Collines-de-l'Outaouais municipal police service. "They almost had an accident, a head-on collision. Basically we were blessed not to have a fatal collision that night."

The off-duty officers called their on-duty colleagues, who stopped the woman and found four children between the ages of four and nine years old in the car. Tests showed the driver had three times the legal limit of alcohol in her blood.

The woman had been coming home from the Gatineau Hot Air Balloon Festival and had already driven 36 kilometres when she was pulled over, police said.

The woman had no previous convictions, Fournel said, but given her blood alcohol level and the number of children in the car, she was detained by police until her court appearance.

In addition, her vehicle has been impounded for a 30-day period.