Can I Still Be Arrested For DUI After Passing A Breathalyzer Test?

Welcome back to our YouTube channel. I’m really excited. I’ve been spending all day doing a whole bunch of videos on common topics, and I want to ask you this one, can you still be charged with impaired driving if you pass the breathalyzer test of the police station? The shocking answer to many people, and the short answer is, yes, you absolutely can. And it’s a very nuanced answer, and I’m going to go through it.

So first of all, let’s assume you got charged and you were taken back to the station arrested, and, I should say, taken back to the station, and you blew under 80 milligrams of alcohol in 100 milliliters of blood shouldn’t they let you go? No, not necessarily. You see, with impaired driving, there’s two offences. There’s blowing over, but there’s also a impaired operation, which means if your ability to operate a motor vehicle is impaired by alcohol, even to a slight degree, you could be charged. So for example, you could be fatigued that day, and you were driving badly, you were slurring your speech. You were walking was bad. The police are going to charge you even though you’re under the legal limit, and that is going to be left for the courts to sort of or fight. Take someone who’s a new drinker they’ve never had a drink before in their life for example. They might blow under and be severely impaired because they’re not used to drinking they have no tolerance. Just giving you a couple of examples. There’s other examples. You see, it can be impairment by a combination of things. It could be a combination of impaired by drugs and or alcohol, which includes prescription medications, because prescriptions can exacerbate that is increase the symptoms of alcohol. So there’s so there’s many instances where I’ve represented clients who blew under the legal limit, who also get charged. There’s also what’s called a drug recognition evaluation, that’s a 12 step process back at the police station, where the police have reasonable probable grounds to believe you’ve been impaired by a drug. So they’ll give you all these tests. Balance test, coordination tests, eye and nystagmus test where you follow eyes and the expert determines that you’re impaired by a drug, they’ll also take your blood or urine which will show that, and you might only have a reading of 30 of alcohol, but those two things in combination made you quite impaired. So there’s all sorts of situations where people blow under but still get charged with impaired because they have symptomology like slurred speech, walking is bad, the driving is bad, etc. Now many of those cases are defendable because we can come up with other reasons potentially. For example, it was the fatigue that was causing this, not the alcohol and sometimes we will hire experts in that regard to interpret what level of alcohol say 40 does coupled with fatigue, etc. So it’s a very nuanced answer, normally, in many situations, of course, when you blow under the legal limit they will let you go but if the symptomology is there for the police to charge you with impaired operation because they see these impaired symptoms and they very well may charge you and you could get convicted. Certainly a good lawyer can help you with those particular charges eventually and you should consider hiring one. That’s my answer to this interesting question that people are always shocked by. How the heck can I get charged if I blow under the legal limit. Well you can, in many situations.