Question: My fiancee and I traveled to a party at a friend's house out of town last weekend, and I had a bit too much to drink. She said she was fine, though, so I let her do the driving.
She must have been driving a little too fast, because we didn't drive more than a few miles when the police pulled us over. I guess that I didn't realize how intoxicated she was because she didn't do so well on the tests they had her do on the roadside. Then, when they asked her to do one more test, she got scared and said she wanted a lawyer before she did anything else. She ended up spending two traumatic nights in jail.
I am really concerned about all this. What kind of trouble is she looking at for refusing to take that test, and what more does my fiancee have to look forward to as she tries to deal with this charge? - B.D., San Bernardino
Answer: Your fiancee has much to deal with in the near future with regard to her DUI arrest, and I'm afraid she won't be looking forward to any of it. Your questions are so good and so important that I am going to dedicate the column this week and next to examining the painful course one will likely endure if they are charged with driving under the influence in California.
To begin with, it is highly unlikely your fiancee was pulled over because she was speeding. Speeding usually requires quick thinking and even quicker reflexes; both are behaviors that are usually not present in those driving under the influence.
While there are many things an intoxicated driver might do to draw the attention of the authorities, the top five are:
Making wide turns.
Straddling lane markers.
Drunken "appearance" of the driver.
Near miss with another vehicle or object.
Weaving or drifting from lane to lane.
Once your fiancee was pulled over by the police, the officers no doubt started examining her visually. They were probably checking to see how her eyes looked, if her speech was slurred, if her face was flushed, if her coordination was off in any way, or if anything about her behavior or speech seemed questionable. Since you had just come from a party, they probably could smell alcohol emanating from the car.
At that point, it sounds like your fiancee was put through the standard battery of field sobriety tests. They probably had her walk heel to toe and stand on one leg to test her balance. They also might have had her try to follow the beam of a small flashlight with her eyes. They were looking to see if her eyes started to jerk when they were drawn to the sides, as they usually will when someone is under the influence.
It then sounds like your fiancee made a critical error. If the test she refused was the chemical test of her blood or breath, she lost her driver's license for one year the very second she refused. Every driver in California gave every police officer in California the right to administer a chemical test the minute they signed their driver's license. It's called "implied consent," and if your fiancee refused, that might explain why she spent 48 hours in jail, as opposed to a single evening. The additional jail time is often the result of that refusal.
Although those two days in jail were no doubt extremely difficult for her, next week I will go into detail about the thorny road she has yet to face. As she is about to discover, getting charged with DUI will affect her life in ways she might never have imagined.
Michelle Groh-Gordy is the owner of InterActive! Traffic School Online at www.trafficinteractive.com , and writes a syndicated weekly column on driving for the publications of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group.
