Erick Trivedi DUI/DWI Law Blog on Lawyers.com

Florida DUI, Field Sobriety Tests - do i take the test?

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 by Erick Trivedi

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Once a police officer suspects that a driver is impaired he/she will attempt to gain consent from the driver to perform Field Sobriety Tests (FSTs).  Most drivers submit to this request because they believe that they must.  Overwhelmingly, the police will use language to suggest this, such as "I am going to ask you to perform some tests in order to see if I can let you drive home".  The suggestion here is that you will go to jail if you don't submit to the test.

Most often, the police officer is working backwards from his conclusion and anyone is hard pressed to convince the officer that he or she is not impaired.  This is also because the tests are completely subjective.  Meaning that the officer must judge for himself whether the big picture indicates poor or satisfactory performance.

An often misunderstood notion is that the FSTs are reliable scientific tests.  They are not, in fact, in most cases these tests are less than 85% accurate in predicting BAC of 1.0 or higher.  This is problematic in Florida where the limit is even lower .08%

www.trivediandassociates.com

 
Posted at 08:48 AM
Topic: DUI/DWI
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