NTSB recommends cutting DUI threshold to .05

Never saw this thread before now, but I have thought this for years. It seems like a pretty simple solution. It would force people who drink often (myself included) to HAVE to come up with a plan if they expect to drink more than a beer or two. And if they didn't have a plan, then they would still have to find a way to get home without endangering others.

 

It takes more than one faulty step on the walk-and-turn or one stutter on the one-legged stand for an officer to form probable cause to arrest. Roadside PBTs are not precise, which is why the readings they give are inadmissible in court, although some jurisdictions allow the officer to testify that it was positive for presence of alcohol.

If everything happened as you describe -and I'm not trying to be a dick, but memories can shift - then the officers didn't know what they were doing. Or at least aren't very good. The PBT should almost never be administered before the FSTs. The results of the PBT should never be shared with the driver prior to either a blood draw or getting the driver to give a breath sample back at the station on a Breathalyzer that is accurate enough to be admissile and under a procedure that rules out false positives. And there's no such thing as "passing" or "failing" FSTs. The officer should be looking for clues of possible impairment. Lastly, you didn't mention whether they conducted an eye movement test known as HGN. If they didn't do that test, they were clearly poorly trained on making DUI arrests.

 

They did not do the eye movement test.

Like I said, it was the strangest experience of my life. I still don't understand what happened. I know the sequence happened like I said it did, for sure, because it was so wild. One minute, I'm going to jail for extreme DUI having had three beers six hours before, trying to figure out how to explain to my wife that I just got arrested for DUI, but I'm sober. The next, I'm on my way home. I honestly thought they were going to just pull me right over again or something. I had no idea what the hell just happened, and still don't.

I wanted to go ask for the record of the stop, if they keep that, to see whether they were lying. But I was so scared that they would charge me after the fact or something. Which I guess is not possible, but who knows?

I won't even have a light beer at dinner now, if I'm driving. I won't drive the same day I've had a beer, even 10 hours later. Not because I believe I'm impaired, but because I basically do not trust the PBT or the guys administering it.