Have you recently been charged with a drunk driving offense in South Carolina? Maybe you know someone who has been in this predicament and want to be able to offer support to them. In either case, one of the things you will want to learn about is the accuracy rates or lack thereof associated with the various tests used by officers.
As explained by FieldSobrietyTests.org, before you are asked to provide a breath sample or a blood sample, you may well have been asked to perform other tasks. Commonly referred to as field sobriety tests, these brief examinations do not in any way prove whether or not you are intoxicated. In fact, there is no way that they could actually do that as they are not scientifically able to do so. However, they are used to support the notion that you could be intoxicated and this gives an officer sufficient leverage to place you under arrest.
Of the three tests used, you should also know that none of them are fully accurate. Even with all three tests used together, the combined maximum accuracy rate is only 82 percent. Individually the accuracy rates range from a low of 65 percent for the one-leg stand test to a high of 77 percent for the horizontal gaze nystagmus test. The walking test is only 68-percent accurate.
If you would like to learn more about the types of testing used in a drunk driving investigation and how accurate it really might be, please feel free to visit the driver’s rights page of our South Carolina drunk driving and criminal defense website.
