I watch a lot of true police videos on YT. Seems like in America the police always make suspected drunk drivers do weird tricks like say the alphabet backwards, or walk one foot in front of the other.
Where I’m from if the police suspect you’re driving drunk or high they would just use a breathalyser on you, why don’t they just do that in the US?
Comments
DUI is not only for alcohol. Prescription narcotics, weed, and inhalants constitute to DUI, a breathalyzer would not capture those drugs. Although I agree an initial breathalyzer would catch drunk driving from the get go and if not then the other tests would be needed. Another thought is breathalyzers may not be calibrated and officers want corroborated testing so the charge is not thrown out.
Because multiple tests is better than only 1 test. If you can say “Well. breathalyzer didn’t show anything.. but when asked to walk a straight line the person stumbled and fell down”,. is potentially another data point.
Using flashlight etc to check for nystagmus .. is also a bit of a dead give away.
Physical coordination requires rapid and accurate control of your muscles, etc. Alcohol impedes this and it is noticeable.
Because alcohol isn’t the only thing that can impair your ability to drive.
I’d trust a behavioral test for ability to drive more than one that only detects alcohol.
I’ll tell you one thing, I’d fail the backwards- alphabet test sober
I would fail the one standing on 1 foot sober. I have to sit down to put my pants on or hold onto the wall.
They are tests (FSTs), not tricks… It’s a way to test for someone under the influence of drugs. also, more evidence to show alcohol impairment better chance to get a conviction.
Pseudoscience, psychological pressure, attempts to convict based on bogus “evidence”.
I served on a jury for a drunk driving case once. At least in Massachusetts (where I lived at the time) the breathalyzer isn’t admissible in court, but the video of the police interacting with the person that was pulled over is. I assume it’s similar in other states, but haven’t looked into it.
Those tests are entirely voluntary and refusing them isn’t grounds for arrest.
Because a field sobriety test (weird circus tricks) is much more difficult to pass even for people who are 100% sober. The police can’t violate the rights of innocent people if they can’t trick them into creating bogus evidence that the courts can use to convict them. Law enforcement doesn’t really care about the truth, they just care about getting as much evidence as possible to convict you of whatever crime they think you might have committed – it doesn’t really matter to them if the evidence is real or not as long is it can be used in court.
So cops can lie about how you slightly stumbling means you’re impaired
Never consent to a field sobriety test. It’s a sham. You will fail.
All the actions in field sobriety test are moderately difficult and require good coordination. Most sober individuals can’t pass all of them without at least one stumble. The test is designed to generate probable cause.
This varies a lot from department to department. For some it is looking for other forms of impairment. For some they want to monitor you before the breathalyzer so they can determine whether you did something to screw with the test. In DOT testing and some workplace testing there is an observed waiting period before a test. Sometimes it is just a legacy thing people keep doing.
One thing to note is that in MOST jurisdictions in the United States the roadside breathalyzer test is not what they would use in court. They take you back to the station and use another machine that is more evidentially solid.
If you are arrested or taken to the station you are generally better off refusing the breath test. They will probably do a blood test instead which takes time and might get you under the limit. Most don’t do this because they don’t know better or they do but they are impaired so make a bad decision.
Also don’t drink and drive.
Source: Used to work for breathalyzer company.
Breathalyzer is at the office and they need to arrest you to take you there. They need to have “probable cause” to arrest you, thus the physical tests. PBT’s (portable breath test machines) are not admissible in court.
You don’t have to comply with the silly dance, just demand a breathalyzer and ask if you’re being detained after you blow.
If they ask you to do the stupid backwards alphabet thing ask them to do it, no one knows the alphabet backwards man.
Because it’s another piece of evidence…..
That way if you get a slick lawyer who manages to convince a jury that because there was some paperwork error on the breathalyzer calibration they should ignore the fact that you blew a 0.40…..
The conviction can still proceed on the basis of you failing the FSTs on camera…..
Probably one in a million but I definitely had alcohol on my breath but wasn’t drunk. I was given the field test and I know he smelled me, I had had a few drinks. I was coming back from a fundraiser for someone who was dying of cancer and I told him that. I think me passing the field test even though I had definitely been drinking was good enough for him to let me drive home without a DUI since I was already having a difficult time.
Maybe some cops are good people and just don’t want people out there drunk driving and hurting people. I’ve told cops I stopped for a beer after work and they didn’t even test me or anything.
Not being an asshole goes a long way.
They do both. I think a lot of it is a holdover to when they had to take you to the police station to do a breathalyzer because the machine was not portable. A field sobriety test would establish a cause to detain you.
The police don’t really advertise this fact for… their own reasons, but you are free to refuse a field sobriety test. If you do, the cop will likely take you to the station to measure your BAC properly.
Best one is Steve Martin in the Man with 2 Brains lol
They don’t make you. It’s a trap.
Those tests are not reliable. You don’t have to do them. There is no punishment to refusing to take them. It’s all a trick to allow a cop to have “probable cause”. Mobile breathalyzers are also not reliable and you are not required to take one. Only blood test and the regularly calibrated and maintained breathalyzer the police stations are reliable and allowed in court to exonerate someone. But consenting to take reliable tests is how they get you. You consented to it, now its your problem.
In the US cops are encouraged to lie to people. To trick them. It is fully supported by our laws and courts that the police lie and use everything they can AGAINST you. NEVER for you.
Got me.
As a doctor, I would prefer for doctors to perform neurological exams and police to enforce laws.
Because in America they don’t just have the right to your bodily functions / fluid / breath without probable cause that you might be drunk.
It’s also literally as if your body is testifying against you and you have the right in America to not self incriminate.
Why do we use standardized field sobriety tests (SFST’s) instead of only the breathalyzer?
Law and policy dictate that we do so.
In my state, you shall not make a DUI arrest based solely on a portable breathalyzer (PBT) reading. It would be a false arrest to pull someone over, offer the PBT, and take them to jail for blowing a .25.
Why? (Other than that the legislature has told us to do so)
PBT’s are pretty inaccurate. Mine consistently reads .2-.4 high. They are neither legal nor scientific instruments. I would not feel comfortable arresting someone on the basis of that tool.
PBT’s only test for blood alcohol. DUID is as common, if not more common, than a solely alcohol DUI. SFST’s, combined with driver behavior, and other parts of an investigation, can establish probable cause for impairment based on almost any substance.
When considering an investigation holistically, it is rarely a good idea to rely on one piece of evidence to prove a specific element of a crime, when possible. If you’re relying on a PBT for a DUI case, and the defense suppresses the PBT for whatever reason, your case is probably over.
Just because you’re below the legal limit it doesn’t mean you may not be a risk on the road.
I have never been drunk in my life and I could not say the alphabet backwards if my life depended on it.
Handheld breathalzyers have been to be ruled to be too inaccurate for legal purposes, so they do all these other things to try to collect enough evidence against you to arrest you and take you back to the police station where the real, accurate breathalizer is.
In New Zealand we have random stops on busy roads where every car/driver goes through, stops at a point where a police officer is, counts to 5 into a breathalyser and is on their way again (unless over the limit).
Does the States have random check points like this?
They want evidence to differentiate between bad driving and impaired driving.
Objectively: It’s to increase blood and air flow to make the breathalyzer read BAC “better”.
Subjectively: make the driver “realize” they are impaired.
It takes time for alcohol you’ve drank to fully enter your blood. I always figured the roadside stuff was them stalling in case you had a drink right before you left the house/bar/wherever to make sure everything you consumed shows up on the breathalyzer
I can recite the alphabet backwards faster than 90 percent of the population can recite it alphabetically.
You can ask them to do a breathalyzer, but if they refuse and you have no other reason to believe they are drunk you can’t arrest them unless they have broken a law.
By making them do coordination tasks they can see if the driver is impaired and get more evidence so that if a breathalyzer is refused they can detain you under suspicion of intoxication until they can get a court ordered drug test.
In some cities or states they need probable cause to make you take a breathalyzer (and sometimes they can’t make you). Generally even if you’re sober never agree to any of those tests and make them force you to do anything if they have the cause
So the test basically gives them probable cause and then they’ll test for alcohol, and then potentially take you in to the hospital for bloodwork to see if it is other drugs
Because things like drugs both illegal and legal impare you but won’t show on a breathalyzer
OP it looks like you’re British. Here’s an article from 2021 questioning whether the Field Sobriety Tests used by British police are necessary.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0025802420966402
As an Englishman I always found it weird that they don’t trust breathalysers but do trust lie detectors.
It’s an investigative tool. It is an easy excuse to detain someone, extending the interaction, allowing them to fish for any other information that might tickle their fancy.
The tests are subjective on purpose, so they can convict more people of DUI regardless of the facts.
I’ve had field sobriety tests done before and I have never had to recite the alphabet backwards. We did have a coordination test with touching your finger to your nose with your eyes closed, and I’m guessing a reaction? test, had us approximate 30 seconds in our mind and say out loud when I thought my 30 seconds were up. Passed every time because I wasn’t impaired (though one time I was smoking weed literally 45 seconds before being pulled over so I wasn’t high yet)
Breathalyzers only check for alcohol in the system but there are many other substances that you can’t take while driving. The field sobriety tests is trying to identify if you’re impaired, after they suspect you of being impaired then they try to find what the cause is.
I don’t know, but if you get to the point in the traffic stop where they are asking you to perform one, you might as well refuse and go to jail because it’s happening anyway.
If they use breathalyzers all the time then it looks suspicious when they only do a nystagmus test after they accidentally pull over a friend, city councilman they like, or off-duty fellow cop.
This is an easy one to look up: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_sobriety_testing
Google the science of field sobriety tests
The sobriety tests is there to help convict you if you are sober. If the only test is breathalyzer and it shows zero they can’t do anything. If you take a field sobriety test but a breathalyzer blows zero they can still argue in court with video evidence saying look at this fool jumping like a monkey. He clearly drunk, don’t believe your eyes when you see zero on the breathalyzer.
If I am legally drunk at 0.08%, and the breathalyzer reads 0.05, they still want to arrest me. If there is no breathalyzer, they can say I failed the field sobriety test.
It’s not about the cost, if the breathalyzer made their job easier and resulted in more arrests, the cost of the breathalyzer would be no problem.
collecting evidence for trial. I was part of a DUI trial and many jurors would not evict on the breathalyzer alone.
Canada here. My brother got busted for a DUI a few years back. He got off easy though because even though he blew way over the limit, the cops didn’t conduct a field sobriety test.
If you are in the US and cops want to do anything, but a breathalyser, REFUSE! Don’t just hand them evidence. They can’t make you do a balance test. They will take you in for a test tho.
To collect evidence against you.
Because you can get fucked up on more then just alcohol.
There is a ton of bad/misinformation in these comments.
The reason is the US Constitution. Innocent until proven guilty. Due process. Reasonable suspicion. Probable cause etc.
FSTs are voluntary tests that provide indicators of impairment. These tests help an officer build PC. The breathalyzer in the field is another voluntary test used to confirm suspicions.
The breath or blood test at the station/jail is not voluntary. Every state has implied consent laws requiring drivers to provide a chemical test upon suspicion of being impaired.
Basically, US LE requires reasonable suspicion to conduct any of the FSTs and PC to arrest.
In my state you can be convicted of DUI if the cop deems you’re unfit to drive in your current capacity. This could be as simple as you took a Benadryl and are just trying to get home.
They don’t make you do anything. You can just stand there and look at them and so nothing.
A Little thing called, “Due process” cops have to follow rules. and those rules are that they need probably cause to do a search. “a search” in this case being a breathalizer.
Fuck the police.
Why cops ask you to do them isn’t a mystery. Because many people don’t believe they are too drunk to drive. So they will willingly take the test and then provide more evidence that they are in fact drunk. Gives the cops extra justification to demand a breathalyzer and to obtain a conviction.
What the hell are you talking about. Field sobriety tests are a thing in Europe too. The Romberg Balance Test was named after a German.
All of those tests are to create evidence against you. It’s much easier for you to fight it if you don’t say or do anything other than invoking your 5th Amendment right to STFU
The claim is that the field sobriety test can test for intoxicants other than alcohol. The reality is that the field sobriety test is subjective, and doing it perfectly is almost impossible. If the cop wants probable cause for something like searching your vehicle then the field sobriety test gives them that.
Well the real breathalyzer is down at the police station, so the act of bringing someone there is generally after the arrest.
The questions and tests they give you are generally qualifying tests to determine if you are coherent enough to drive safely.
I know a guy that went to pick up people from a bar and was completely sober and still charged a dui even though he blew 0.0. But he was so nervous when the police pulled him over he apparently failed the sobriety tests. This guy is the example in the dictionary as “white bread” and his voice is comically high pitched like a cartoon, but I doubt he has ever jaywalked in his life.
I on the other hand passed the sobriety tests 2 times, but was still arrested one time. My lawyer pointed out from the tapes I passed easily. But was still arrested because they found a beer in my car, it was the passengers, but yes I was drinking that night.
The point is they are supposed to come to a reasonable assessment on their own that someone is drunk before they take the time and effort to arrest someone and give them the machine test. If you arrest someone that is sober and make them go through the whole ordeal to prove they were fine it can cause a resentment on the police and sometimes fuck with an individuals ideas on police. But if you arrest someone blatantly drunk, they deserve it and probably won’t remember much anyway
If you watch a lot of YT videos, you would be very aware that after the sobriety test, the next thing they do is ask the suspect to take a breathalyzer test. Should that come first? Maybe, but what’s with the “America is so behind, they don’t have breathalyzers!”
Because a weird trick is open to their interpretation, instead of actual results. So you didn’t do the pointe right in your ballet dance, you must be impaired, theres my probable cause to do a blood draw.. oh look I found trace amounts of some drug that you may or may not have been being affected by while driving, like dental anesthesia or something, bam, solid DUI case. But if they gave you a breathalyzer, it would have said no problem.
Because they are trained to get all the evidence they need for the prosecutor to be successful in getting a conviction, there are many tricks they use that ensure you will be convicted.
Boy your drunk tests are hard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unseSFWjuqs
You can be convicted of drunk driving even if you pass the breathalyzer.
Probable cause. They need a reason to test you. Weaving on the road is a reason to stop. But now we need to make sure it wasn’t just because you were being unatentive or reckless.
Once they establish that you’re impaired in some way
Now we have to find out what substance is the cause.
Which is why checkpoints are a major grey area.
I would fail those tests stone cold sober lol. I’m constantly pinballing off the walls just to stop myself from falling on my face. Balance issues are out of control lol. And backwards alphabet? It scrambles in my head before I get past the first (last?) three letters. I don’t drive, so the idea of a test is almost a non-issue for me, but still.
They don’t make you do that. You have to consent to it, if you don’t though you get arrested either way.
It’s not to see if you’re drunk. It’s to gather evidence to prove you’re drunk.
A few factors here. The first is that breathalyzers are far from foolproof. It’s illegal to drive with a blood alcohol level of more than .08. A breathalyzer is measuring the air you exhale and deducing your BAC. There’s a lot of ways to skew this result. For example, having consumed any alcohol within the last 20 minutes will skew the result way up. So if you finished your beer, headed out, and got pulled over by the cop waiting outside the bar, you’ll have an elevated reading. There’s all kinds of other biological factors that can skew a result like this, especially when you’re measuring something as a thousandth of a percent. Doing field sobriety tests basically strengthens your case. You might be able to fight the breathalyzer result in court. It’s harder to fight a case where you failed a breathalyzer, couldn’t walk in a straight line, and couldn’t touch your nose without accidentally gouging your eye.
Then there’s the problem that the breathalyzer only measures alcohol. It’s illegal to drive under the influence of any drug. So if you pull someone over who is obviously impaired, but their bac is below .08, the field sobriety tests will help build a case that the person is impaired. Other drugs don’t have established concentrations where a person is considered impaired. You generally test positive or negative unless you use really sophisticated tests. So you could be impaired on opiates and blow a .07 but be obviously impaired. They can get a warrant for a drug screen but you could say you used the opiate yesterday and were no longer impaired. But again, if there’s 5 minutes of video where you demonstrate a lack of basic motor functions, the case is much stronger.
These tests might seem excessive or a waste of time but the extra 5-10 minutes spent doing a field sobriety tests could save the legal system weeks of litigation and the monumental costs of taking a case to trial because the defendant thinks they can dispute the breathalyzer result and that’s the only evidence of the dui. If they failed the breathalyzer and there’s additional evidence of impairment, you have a better chance of getting them to plea out and be done with it.
Breathalyzers and other quick drug tests are notoriously inaccurate and can pick up a lot of things that aren’t the substances they are supposed to be measuring. That’s why you are allowed to refuse one in favor of a motor skills test.
Having worked prosecution in Massachusetts, one of the reasons the police are trained to do both in the state is that with the breathalyzer, you need an expert witness to come in and testify about the process and the machine used which is expensive. But if you can have the police testify to what they witnessed both during the stop, the sobriety tests, and use them to get body cam footage into evidence of available, then that is typically enough evidence needed for a conviction without the cost of an expert witness. The breathalyzer is still used as a confirmation test for the officers. Additionally, in Massachusetts and other states, if you deny the breathalyzer that’s grounds for an automatic license suspension.
You don’t have to play Simon says with the police, but you do have to accept a breathalyzer or blood test or risk losing your license.
Running sobriety tests on sober people will give false positive “indications” of intoxication around 30% of the time. Read through the comments, people very often can’t say their zyx’s or imagine being on the shoulder of a busy road in 40 degree weather whilst it’s raining and being told to stand on one leg as cars scream by with their lights in your eyes…
Just politely decline the games and consent to a breathalyzer.
In California there are two separate charges that can go with an alcohol DUI. I will intentionally not speak to impairment from other substances, only alcohol. I am also not familiar with other states. I learned this from serving jury duty on a DUI case (defendant took a plea agreement before any verdict).
Driving while intoxicated.
Driving with a BAC of .08 or above.
It is possible for a driver to be under .08 and be too messed up to drive. It is also possible to be over .08 and be perfectly coordinated to drive safely.
In California, driving under the influence is not a crime, it’s the impairment that can get you in more trouble. Therefore if they pass the field sobriety test but fail the breathalyzer, the jury could find them not guilty for the impairment part and guilty for being over the legal limit. I had this come up as a juror recently.
I have a sheriff deputy brother, and asked him this exact question recently. His answer was that the field sobriety test is to test your cognitive state, and the breathalyzer is just to confirm suspicions of inebriation.
When I was 18 I was driving with my friend. She had been drinking beer but I was sober. I got pulled over for rolling through a stop sign because I was lost and not familiar with the area (this was before GPS). When I rolled my window down he said he smelled alcohol and asked if I was drinking. I said no but he didn’t believe me and made me get out of my car. He started making me do all the stupid tests and then said that he was going to have to call his Sargent. At that point I started crying hysterically. They tried to give me a breathalyzer but I couldn’t breathe long enough to do it. They had to wait for me to calm down some. When I was finally able to do it it was at zero. ACAB
In the US, the police cannot compel you to give blood without a warrant. You also cannot be compelled to blow into a breathalyzer without probable cause.
The antics are designed to provide probable cause.
You can refuse to perform the antics, in which case you are voluntarily giving up your driving license.
I’m a cop.
The portable breathanalyzer is optional and some people are too drunk to blow into it. The portable one is calibrated by the agency that owns it which people argue in court means they’re rigged. The big one back at the station is run by the county technician and isn’t optional.
The field sobriety tests are easy to try and hard to do for drunk people. Most people are willing to try them, but won’t blow into the breathanalyzer because they know they’re drunk but think they can “beat” the tests.
We’re supposed to do all the tests the same way every time because DUI court is notorious for grilling you on petty shit and dropping the charges.
For example, one of the standard DUI interview questions is “have you been drinking since the accident?” That’s because someone argued in court that they crashed their car and THEN started drinking, and were never DUI. So they beat that case.
These tests are shams they don’t work at all the chances of you failing those are quite big and even the eye test they do is easily falsifiable.
The truth is that in the USA a cop needs probable cause which ends up with cops creating stupid shit to create false justification.
Because they don’t care if you’re innocent.
It’s not an actual test. It’s incredibly subjective by design to give the cop any number of justifications to arrest you. Then, in court he can say, “in my experience…” and even though he’s a nobody with a high school diploma and 8 weeks of “academy,” 12 of your peers will trust what he says because “he did a field sobriety test.”
Refuse the test. State you won’t answer questions and you want a lawyer. Then, most importantly, don’t answer questions.
In the US you have a constitutional right not to provide evidence that would incriminate you. You cannot be compelled to provide breath, blood, or any bodily fluids that would be used to incriminate you.
For some reason, I memorized how to say the alphabet backwards when I was a teen (during my poetry-memorizing phase).
So I could just rattle it off even today. But I don’t drink and drive.
In Florida I believe they will have to take you to a central location for the test, so they run you through the roadside test first.
They are looking for impairment which can cover a variety of issues that are unrelated to wobble pops.
Because they’re ambiguous and can be interpreted by the cop.
“I smelled alcohol on their breath and they failed the roadside tests” is hard to refute. “Breathalyzer says not drunk” can’t be argued with.
If you fail the sobriety test and pass the breathalyzer, does that allow them to bring you to a hospital and check your blood or urine to see if you’re on drugs?
It’s because of power. They have it and you don’t, so they flex it by humiliating you. Typical bully behavior.
Had a test once, cop had me follow his flashlight with just my eyes. He goes up, up, up. I eventually say “my eyes can’t go that high”. He says “that’s the point. Drunk people look up. You are good”.
It’s to just get you to fail so they can make their quota
They’re look for any reason to arrest people and full their quota
They have quotas to meet and these tests give them a pretext to arrest enough people to fill their quota. It has nothing to do with actual intoxication, just economics.
They make you do that in Europe too. I was twice made to walk like that in Munich. (No I wasn’t drunk)
I thought it was because the breathalyzer would be wrong if for example you just did a shot of vodka within a few minutes of then taking the breathalyzer. It’s possible that you’re not drunk but the breathalyzer reading would be inaccurate.
So they can claim you were impaired regardless of the breathalyzer results.
Humiliation is a tactic of control.
They want to create evidence against you to fill their arrest quota, and they also have fun humiliating you.
It’s nearly impossible to fight a cop’s word, so they do it to force people into the for profit prison system with no recourse
The goal is to get as much evidence as possible against the person. Bury them. That is why you should never do these stupid tests. You’re just testifying against yourself. Plus, they are ridiculously subjective.
Police in the US usually need probable cause to do a breathalyzer test.
They do both.