We've all heard and talked about field sobriety tests. Usually it was in college after a couple of beers. Sometimes it's after being stopped by the cops and asked to do them. Whatever the case, everyone knows doing them is not easy, and no one knows if they actually tell the cops anything. To learn more, keep reading.

I'm a Seattle DUI lawyer. We don't call field sobriety tests field sobriety tests. We call them roadside tests. That should be an indication of how helpful they are at determining whether or not someone is too impaired to operate a vehicle. The short answer is not very helpful at all.

Roadside tests were originally dreamed up by the government over 20 years ago to come up with a way to let cops know if someone was driving drunk. They were intended to provide concrete proof of whether or not someone was drunk driving. Unfortunately, they've never come close to that benchmark. All roadside tests give you is a percentage that someone has a BAC over .10. Most of the time that percentage doesn't get over 80.

Notice that the tests were designed to show a BAC of .10? What do you think happened when the legal limit was lowered? You guessed it, they just magically determined road side tests would show a BAC of .08! And unlike most scientific assertions, roadside tests have never been peer reviewed. Shocking I know.

Thankfully the courts haven't bought into the junk science of roadside tests completely. Though the results of the tests can often come into evidence, they are limited in the conclusions that can be drawn from them. Typically the cops can only testify that roadside tests can show consumption of alcohol.

In the end, roadside tests are a lot of junk science. The cops like to use them because people have been taught that they can genuinely tell if someone is too drunk to drive. In Washington, where I am a Seattle DUI lawyer, they are completely voluntary, and should never be done anyway. They are tough to do without practice, and almost never help your cause. Just say no.