Dui Tests Not 100-Percent Accurate

If you are like most people in Illinois you are aware that when a police officer suspects a driver they have pulled over may be impaired by alcohol, they may ask the driver to participate in some tests before making an arrest for drunk driving. These tests are commonly called field sobriety tests because they are done in the field where a driver has been stopped by officers and they evaluate to some degree a person’s sobriety.

However, as explained by FieldSobrietyTests.org, these tests do not actually prove that a driver is intoxicated. In fact, all these tests can do is to support the potential that a driver may be intoxicated. This information then can support an officer legally arresting a driver and charging them with a drunk driving offense.

The field sobriety tests used are not fully accurate and drivers should know this. The most accurate of the three tests measures an involuntary response of the eyeball and that test is only 77-percent accurate. The one-leg stand test and the walk-and-turn test have accuracy rates of 65 percent and 68 percent, respectively. A driver’s physical health may interfere with their ability to pass one or more of these tests. Even the simple fact of being overweight may be problematic for drivers.

If you would like to learn more about the accuracy of three different tests used in a drunk driving investigation prior to a person being arrested, please feel free to visit the field sobriety test page of our Illinois criminal defense website.