That's not how field sobriety tests work, because they don't actually work at all, they're just a way to give cops a justification for their suspicions without conducting an actually functional test.
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
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"Come on, officer, I couldn't do that even if I was sober!"
It still blows my mind that they're apparently commonly used in the US instead of breathalysers like everywhere else.
Of course they're also using polygraph tests. So at least they're consistent in using shit testing methods.
At least polys can't be used in court. I'd imagine it wouldn't be too difficult for a lawyer to get things tossed if their only rationale was a poly test.
Why don't American cops have breathalyzers in the car and instead elect to do this interpretive dance on the side of the road?
That's the weird thing, they do. And if they're asking you to do field sobriety tests they're 100% going to breathalyze you too
Dance monkey. How dare you not know the alphabet back to front?
They have them and can do both. I think field sobriety tests might be more common these days if they suspect you're on something other than alcohol though.
They do. Cops in America just want to jerk you around. People elect to participate because refusing usually means being detained and taken for chemical testing. Breathalyzers and roadside sobriety field tests dont work consistently and can be bypassed easily.
The handheld ones can't be used as evidence in most jurisdictions. SFSTs can be.
It's wild to think a machine which is built to detect alcohol in your breath is less reliable than a human interpreting the dance of another human. "The breathalyzer showed 0.07 but I let them do the dance and it looked more like a 0.09 to me, so I took them in."
And for anyone claiming other substances will not show in a breathalyzer but the dancing. That's what swab tests are for. Collect sample, let chemicals do their thing and decide on wether the indicator turned red or green, with way less interpretation needed than an arbitrary dance.
Having worked in the industry, the machines detecting alcohol aren't unreliable, and the way they work gives the benefit of the doubt to the person blowing.
It's the same here. When someone tests positive they're brought back to the station to a machine that's actually calibrated and can be used as evidence (sometimes it's in the back of the van if they're doing a lot of testing, but it's not carried in a car).
Breathalyzers won't catch other forms of impairment like benzos, narcotics etc
Why did they have to use a pic with a horse in it? Seems distracting.
...it can be
casually pushes a $1 bill forward...eh?
It is how being a cop works in the US, if you shoot an innocent terrified black man, well maybe you switch departments but you get back on your feet, hide the racism from the media interviews and keep climbing the cop ladder!
The mystique Americans have built around checking whether someone is drunk is so weird to me.
Over here you take a breath test. It's not optional. You breathe into the tube and either carry on or get fined and sleep it off before moving on.
I understand that there is some weird hangup about compulsory checks in the US for some reason, as part of the weirdo libertarian nonsense they huff over there, but I've never understood the logic of how spending fifteen minutes having a cop decide whether they want to shoot you is the better alternative.
Normally breathalyzer is the first thing they ask from you. If you are actually sober, and you refuse that test and then you fail a field sobriety test that's completely on you. I don't see how the right to refuse the breathalyzer test is the problem here.
I don't get it. There is a test that takes ten seconds blowing into a tube. Why is "the right to refuse the breathalyzer" a thing? What's the point if you're still going to get tested in a less accurate way that takes longer? What right or freedom is being preserved there other than the right to waste everybody's time and risk a worse outcome? Why does it matter if it's "on you"? There are other people involved, from the cop performing the test to whoever else needs to get stopped or tested after you to potentially the public interest of not having drunk drivers zooming around. Why is it "being on you" relevant?
It's mostly trivial, but man, it is such a microcosm of weird-ass American/anarchocapitalist thinking about public/private interactions.
The word you're looking for is libertarian, but yeah I agree it's a bit odd.