Drinking and driving is not a very smart thing to do but we have all done it. Driving under the influence may cause serious accidents and endanger the lives and health of the drivers and the pedestrians. Now this doesn’t mean that every time a police officer concludes that you are driving under the influence, you have to pay a fine and be at risk of losing your license. There are a lot of ways you can get out of a DUI charge, depending on the situation of course. If you immediately fall down when the police officer asks you to step out of the vehicle and you start mumbling something incomprehensible, then we can hardly help you.
Table of Contents
1. Unlawful detainment of the driver
Most people don’t know this but if you haven’t shown any suspicious behavior and you haven’t broken any laws, a police officer doesn’t have the right to pull you over, conduct a DUI test and arrest you under the charge of DUI. If he does this nonetheless, then any evidence can easily be suppressed and therefore the prosecution can’t use this evidence against you. This usually means that you are completely off the hook.
2. Unreliable field testing
FST or field sobriety tests are used to test your coordination and responsiveness without the use of any testing equipment based on your physical performance. Out of all the tests used by the police, only three of them are trustworthy. Even these three are accurate in 65-77% of all the cases they are used in. They also need to be properly conducted and scored and this rarely happens.
3. Medical conditions that influence the DUI test
There are more than a few medical conditions that can produce faulty DUI tests and wrongly incriminate you. These medical conditions cause the test to give away an unnecessarily higher test result and therefore cause a lot of problems for you. Here is a list of the more common ones:
- Gastro-esophageal Reflux Disease (GERD)
- Acid Reflux
- Heartburn
- Diabetes
- Hypoglycemia
The DUI test actually measures the level of alcohol in your breath and not your blood – that’s why it is influenced by these medical conditions.
4. Blood Alcohol Calculator disconnected cases
BAC tests aren’t always reliable. There are some cases when the test shows that you should be falling down and babbling incomprehensibly but you are acting normally and are able to perform physical activities – you have unimpaired judgment. In cases where a BAC doesn’t validly represent your level of impairment, it cannot be used as evidence.
5. Blood Test Inaccuracy
Blood is a very unstable test substance and can become unreliable very easy. This can happen due to blood fermentation, blood contamination or improper storage.
6. Mouth alcohol level
The standard DUI test measures the level of alcohol in your breath, not your blood. That is why there is always a difference between those two levels. A false BAC level can be caused by the high level of mouth alcohol due to:
- Dental work that kept residual alcohol
- Recent burping or regurgitation
- Previously mentioned medical conditions
7. Police Misconduct
Even if the evidence conclusively shows that you were actually DUI, they can easily be disregarded if the police officer that was on the scene didn’t follow the procedure properly. You might not be able to recognize police misconduct but your lawyer can and that’s why it is important to remember all the details connected to the DUI test.
8. Proof that you were driving
If there is no evidence that you were behind the wheel of the vehicle then there is no DUI case, is there?
9. Radio frequency interference with test results
Chemical blood and breath testers are very sensitive and can be influenced and compromised by many different things. Radio frequencies have been known to cause irregular high BAC results and there are a lot of sources of radio frequencies in these situations. Police radars, AM and FM radios, police station dispatchers and so on can all render the evidence mute.
10. Diet as a cause for high BAC
There are a lot of diets that can cause high BAC results due to high proteins or low-carbohydrates. An Atkins-style diet is one of these kinds of diets.
