Stopped For Drunk Driving in Illinois – DUI Eye Test?

Reader’s Question:

When the Illinois officer stopped me one time when I was driving I noticed that the officer made me to follow a penlight with my eyes to the left and right? Why is that?

Elena

Chicago, IL

Hi Elena, the test that the police officers performed when they stopped you in Illinois is called the horizontal gaze Nystagmus test. For quite sometime, Illinois police officers have utilized definite voluntary tests to decide probable intoxication of drivers stopped on suspicion of a DUI. The tests mottled widely in the past. No research was accessible to establish the fairness of these tests in knowing the level of intoxication. The Illinois National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration explored these tests in 1977 and 1981 and determined a satisfactory test that could fairly dependable to know a driver’s intoxication level.The Nystagmus test is a practically a recent improvement in DUI investigation. The Louisiana police officer will make an effort to make an educated guess the position at which the eye begins to jerk; if this happens sooner than forty five degrees, it hypothetically designates a blood alcohol level over .05%. The smoothness of the eye’s tracking the penlight is also a factor, as is the kind of jerking when the eye is as distant to the side as it can go.This field sobriety test has established to be questioned to a number of different harms, not the slightest of which is the non-medically skilled officer’s skill to be familiar with Nystagmus and calculate approximately the angle of onset. Because of this, and the reality that the test is not established by the health community, it is not allowable in many states; it is, still, allowable in Illinois.

Failed Breath Test Should I Hire a DUI Attorney in Illinois?

Reader’s Question:

I took the DUI breath test and it was over the limit. Do I still get a chance with my case? Should I hire a lawyer?

John

Thank you for asking John.

There is always hope if your DUI lawyer is experienced of those numbers and knows all the ways those numbers can be wrong. The DUI breath test being used by police officers in Illinois does not measure alcohol specifically, and can make many types of errors and mistakes. According to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA), field sobriety tests are only 65% reliable, and breath, blood and urine testing can be similarly unreliable. Some of the factors that can lead to inaccurate results include improper administration, faulty equipment, faulty analysis and other factors.

An experienced and expert DUI lawyer knows how to examine the breath testing records to determine whether the machine that produced it was working improperly or if there are other reasons to believe the number it printed out was inaccurate.

Goodluck!

MariCAR