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?
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Because it allows pigs to harass their victims based on whatever they feel like doing, as opposed to something measurable, fair and logical.
Breathalyzers arent admissible in court(in my state)
Just because you are high functioning doesnt mean you wont show signs. You cant really control eye twitching, so a cop can see that when he tells you to follow his finger.
The US constitution says that police officers need a reason to search the body or property of a person, if the police officer suspects you of being drunk while driving before searching your body for alcohol they need some clue, not a proof but something subjective anyway, the field sobriety test is designed to provide that, its point is to confuse you and make you fail, when you eventually fail they can breath test you.
There are two main reasons. The first is that a roadside breath test only detects alcohol but a driver can be impaired by other substances.
The second is that the actual results of a roadside breathalyzer are generally inadmissible in a criminal trial outside of specific circumstances. Normally an officer can only testify that the PBT detected the presence of alcoholic beverage, not the actual number. I was a local cop at two different agencies, neither issued PBTs for this reason.
Case law in the US considers the roadside olympics to be more accurate than the roadside breath test.
In Germany the police is only allowed to do one testing (either breathalyzer or salvia/pee drug test) in a regular traffic stop. They sometimes do a roadside field test to determine whether you’re drunk or on drugs so they know which test to do afterwards. Been there, done that.
Doesn’t matter. Chronic drunk drivers in the USA usually suffer very little consequences until they kill someone in an accident.
If you can pass the stupid human tricks tests, you can safely drive a vehicle. If you can’t pass them, you probably shouldn’t be driving, whether you’re under the influence or not.
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