When other countries (notably Europe) use roadside ‘Breathalyzer’ test machines? It seems a high-functioning drunk could get away with DUI in the US, when they wouldn’t in France or the UK?
In: Other
A breathalyzer only tests for alcohol and has a margin of error of ~.02% BAC. The higher the person’s BAC, the more inaccurate they are. That also assumes that the breathalyzer is being regularly calibrated. If not, the breathalyzer will become more inaccurate over time. The same is true in ht
You are legally drunk at .08% BAC. Assuming that the breathalyzer is well maintained, about half of the people who are at exactly .08% will test below that, 1/4 of the people who are at .09% will test below, and a small percentage of people at .1% will test below. The same is true in the other direction – ~1/2 of the people at .079% will test above .08% while 1/4 of the people at .07% will test above .08%, and a small but real percentage of people at .06% will test above it as well.
Strictly speaking, a DUI charge is based on impairment, not how much alcohol is in your system. The easiest way to check that for a drunk person is to test how much alcohol is in their blood – which can only be done with a blood test at a hospital.
But drunk people aren’t the only people who drive while impaired.
Plenty of people are impaired as a result of something that isn’t alcohol, and some people will become impaired from tiny amounts of alcohol. Many psychedelic and designer drugs are impractical to test for, so even a blood test at a hospital will not detect them.
The easiest way to test for impairment is not a breathalyzer – its a field sobriety test. Breathalyzers are used in the US as a de-escalation tool, but they’re not legally admissible as evidence due to their inherent inaccuracy. Many EU countries continue to use breathalyzers as evidence because judicial standards are often significantly lower in the EU than they are in the US.
Latest Answers