| Understanding
the Charges
For many honest law abiding citizens, it is frightening to find yourself handcuffed
and placed in the back of a police car and on your way to county jail for the first
time in your life.
In most cases, the officer stopped you because of a minor traffic violation or you
were just unfortunate enough to be on the road during peak D.U.I. arrest hours (9:00pm
to 2:00am) and the officer allegedly witnessed your vehicle weave or cross over
the lane lines. This happens to sober drivers as well as intoxicated drivers.
There are to standard charges in a D.U.I. arrest. Misdemeanors
are filed under Vehicle Code §23152 (a) [driving under the
influence] and §23152 (b) [blood alcohol level of .08%or greater].
If it is charged as a Felony, the offense usually involved
bodily injury to someone other than the driver and are charged
under §23153 (a) and (b).
Was My Blood Alchohol Level Really That High?
The “Average Person fallacy” is one of the greatest sources of error in
blood alcohol testing. The consistently recurring fallacy is that the individual
tested is perfectly average in certain critical physiological traits. Your blood-alcohol
results are dependent on the validity of a number of scientific assumptions. Unfortunately
for the person tested, these assumptions are usually incorrect: The person tested
is rarely “average” in even one of these critical characteristics, let alone in
all of them.
Thus, for example, all breath-testing devices depend on the assumption that the
ratio between alcohol in the blood is 1 to 2100. In fact, the machine is designed
to produce a reading based on that assumption; the accuracy of the reading is directly
tied to the accuracy of this presumption. However, an individual may very from 1:1300
to 1:3000, or even more widely. Thus a person with a true blood-alcohol level of
.08 but a breath-to-blood ratio of 1:1700 would have a .10 reading on an “accurate”
breath-testing instrument. Put simply, these machines do not test individuals. Rather,
they test the average person over and over again, but using the subject’s breath.The
Department of Motor Vehicles puts out a “guideline” chart on how to calculate your
blood alcohol, it is NOT very accurate, but I have placed it here for your reference.
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WAS YOUR BREATH TEST ACCURATE?
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Drinks
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Weight in Pounds:
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100
|
120
|
140
|
160
|
180
|
200
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1
|
.04
|
.03
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.03
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.02
|
.02
|
.02
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2
|
.08
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.06
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.05
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.05
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.04
|
.04
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3
|
.11
|
.09
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.08
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.07
|
.06
|
.06
|
|
4
|
.15
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.12
|
.11
|
.09
|
.08
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.08
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5
|
.19
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.16
|
.13
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.12
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.13
|
.09
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6
|
.23
|
.19
|
.16
|
.14
|
.15
|
.11
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7
|
.26
|
.22
|
.19
|
.16
|
.17
|
.13
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Approx. Blood Alcohol Percentage
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Subtract .01% for each 40 minutes of drinking. One drink is 1 oz. of 100 proof
liquor, 12 oz. beer, or 4 oz. of table wine. Food, fatigue, medications, and
other conditions may cause your blood alcohol level to be different.
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