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Throughout a driving while intoxicated investigation, police officers will usually administer some so-called "field sobriety tests" (FSTs). This may include a battery of three to five tests, usually selected by the officer; these may include walk-and-turn, one-leg-stand, horizontal gaze nystagmus, fingers-to-thumb, finger-to-nose, Rhomberg (modified position of attention), alphabet recitation, or hand-pat. In an increasing quantity of law enforcement agencies in DUI Lawyer Orange County, California and throughout the nation, a "standardized" battery of three tests will be given - walk-and-turn, one-leg-stand and nystagmus - and they should be scored objectively as opposed to utilizing an officer's subjective opinion.

How valid are these FSTs? Not very, according to DUI Lawyer Orange County CA Taylor, a former prosecutor and the composer of the leading legal textbook "Drunk Driving Defense, 6th edition". The tests are fundamentally "designed for failure". In 1991, Taylor reports, Doctor Spurgeon Cole of Clemson University conducted a study on the accuracy of field sobriety tests. His staff videotaped 21 individuals performing 6 common field sobriety tests, then showed the tapes to 14 police officers and asked them to decide perhaps the suspects had "had a lot to drink to drive. " Unknown to the officers, the blood-alcohol concentration of each of the 21 subjects was. 00%. The outcomes: 46% of the time the officers gave their opinion that the subject was too inebriated to drive. Put simply, the FSTs were barely more accurate at predicting intoxication than flipping a coin. Cole and Nowaczyk, "Field Sobriety Tests: Are They Designed for Failure? ", 79 Perceptual and Motor Skills 99 (1994).

How about the brand new, improved "standardized" DUI tests? Research funded by the National Highway Traffic Administration determined that the three most reliable field sobriety tests were walk-and-turn, one-leg stand, and horizontal gaze nystagmus. Yet, even using these supposedly more accurate -- and objectively scored -- tests, the researchers unearthed that 47% of the subjects who would have now been arrested based upon test performance actually had blood-alcohol concentrations of significantly less than the legal limit. In other words, very nearly half of all persons "failing" the tests were not legally consuming alcohol!

According to the Orange County DUI Attorneyattorneys in Mr. Taylor's Southern California attorney, the truth that these tests are largely unfamiliar to the majority of people, and that they receive under exceptionally unfortunate circumstances, cause them to become more challenging for people to do. Only two miscues in performance may result in someone being classified as "impaired" due to alcohol consumption when the problem may actually function as the result of unfamiliarity with the test.