Salt Lake City DUI Lawyer & Attorney : Glen Neeley : Serving Davis County, Ogden, Brigham City, Logan

In trial, the prosecutor's last question to a testifying officer is almost always "Officer, after these field sobriety tests, did form an opinion as to the defendant's ability to safely drive his car?"  The officer always answers, "I formed the opinion that the defendant was too impaired to safely drive a car."

The interesting thing about that opinion is the field sobriety tests were never validated to measure impairment.  They were only validated to give the officer an estimate of whether the person is over the legal limit.

Marcelline Burns and Jack Stuster, in their study entitled "Validation of the Standardized Field Sobriety Test Battery at BACs Below 0.10 Percent" writes on page 27 of the study as follows:

"Many individuals, including some judges believe that the purpose of a field sobriety test is to measure driving impairment.  For this reason, they tend to expect tests to possess "face validity,"  that is, tests that appear to be related to actual driving tasks.  Tests of physical and cognitive abilities, such as balance, reaction time, and information processing, have face validity, to varying degrees, based on the involvement of these abilities to driving tasks; that is, the tests seem to be relevant "on the face of it."  Horizontal gaze nystagmus lacks face validity because it does not appear to be linked to the requirements of driving a motor vehicle.  The reasoning is correct, but it is based on the incorrect assumption that field sobriety tests are designed to measure driving impairment.

Driving a motor a motor vehicle is a very complex activity that involves a wide variety of tasks and operator capabilities.  It is unlikely that complex human performance, such as the required to safely drive an automobile, can be measured at roadside.

It seems as though that the person that developed and validated these tests is saying the officers are incorrect when the officer says these tests measure impairment. The developers say these tests estimate a person's blood alcohol content.

For the complete study, click here.

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If the UHP is getting paid for 75 eight-hour overtime shifts to look for drunken drivers,  don't you think they better find some to justify the cost and expense.  Think about it, they get all this to look for drunken drivers, and what would happen if they have no arrests, no DUIs, and nothing else to justify the cost and expense.  Are there going to be angry people who donated?  As a result, are there going to be innocent people pegged as DUI to justify the cost?

It's like paying the mechanic to fix your car.  You hear a clank, so you take your car to the mechanic.  The mechanic inspects it, test drives it, and gives it a good look-over.  Then he comes back and informs you that there is nothing wrong.  "That will be $500 please."  The reality is that the mechanic must give you something to justify his cost.  He might recommend that you change the johnson rod or the the timing belt, etc.

Here's the story.

By the end of Labor Day weekend, the Utah Highway Patrol will have paid for about 75 eight-hour overtime shifts for troopers looking to stop drunken drivers.

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I once heard a story about how the tuna fisherman would go out on the ocean to harvest the tuna fish.  They would use big, huge, over-sized nets to reap this harvest.  In these big nets, on too many occasions, innocent dolphins would get caught in this net.  The dolphins were considered just collateral damage by the fisherman.  "That is the price you have to pay to get the most fish with the biggest net", the fisherman would reason.  The innocent dolphins were killed and cast aside.

This week, the DUI fisherman (UHP, MADD, and other Law Enforcement Agencies) are casting out their huge nets across the state.  In this net, there will be many innocent people caught and thrown in with the guilty to prove their innocence.  Here's the article announcing the fishing hunt.

Coming off a record year in 2006 for highway fatalities, the Utah Highway Patrol is gearing up to make sure there isn't a repeat this Labor Day weekend.

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