Unreliable California DUI Field Testing Does Not Account for Age, Nutrition & Fitness

California DUI attorneys fairly show that California’s DUI field sobriety tests are expediently used by California DUI attorney prosecutors and California DUI law enforcement in attempting to convict people of California DUI, but not a true mechanism to determine whether or not California DUI arrestees are truly sober.

The 2006 National Highway Traffic & Safety Administration publication concedes:

“Road tests have long been considered the gold standard for measuring driving ability. They have widely-recognized limitations.” [1]

Real world issues consider the condition (including nutrition & fitness) and age of the California DUI arrestee.

Dr. Marcelline Burns, developer of the standardized field sobriety tests (SFSTs) has conceded that the tests were not designed to determine impairment of driving [2].

Do California field sobriety tests have any real meaning in determining whether or not a person is driving while intoxicated or driving while under the influence? Not much, particularly when you factor in their condition and age.

Normal aging process is accompanied by deterioration in sensory functions and motor performance. [3] Sensory functions necessary in communication also show increased impairment with age [4].

Age-related slowing in cognitive and motor processes include longer reaction time and movement execution time. This is due to increased neural noise, which results in signals being less well detected in the central nervous system [5].

Before SFSTs were developed, in the early decades of experimental psychology, it could already be shown that skill learning ability and motor performance accuracy deteriorate with increasing age [6]. The original SFST data seemed to take this in to account by setting 65 as the upper limit to SFST usefulness. Categorizing the effects of age chronologically as the SFSTs do by stating a 65 year old age limit is both arbitrary and false. Aging actually results in increasing biologic diversity so that we become less alike as we age [7].

Biologic and chronologic ages are not the same, and body systems do not age at the same rate within an individual [8]. The bio-psychological state of a person is important, particularly nutrition and fitness. These factors improve attention and psychomotor performance across all age groups [9].

The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA), much akin to their arbitrary cutoff, 65 years of age [10], also references that an individual 50 lbs or more overweight may have difficulty with the one leg stand [11] test. 64.5% of Americans are overweight and 30.5% are obese [12].

Changes within one’s brain are primarily responsible for a loss of motor skills. A gradual decline in cognitive and motor processes results from chronological age, fitness, and nutrition, and varies from individual to individual.

Age and the consumption of alcohol actually have coexisting benefits. Alcohol decreases the risk of heart disease by raising the level of healthy HDL cholesterol in one’s blood. Alcohol in the form of flavinoids, common in red wine, has been proven to impede blood clots (which form in heart attacks).

Reasonable alcohol ingestion and driving will not stop. California communities owe it to fellow Californians to address the unfair injustices presently used by California DUI law enforcement and California DUI attorney prosecutors in using California DUI field sobriety testing to guess whether or not someone has driven a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.

In the meantime, California DUI defense lawyers will continue to show the major shortcomings of field testing in California DUI cases.

[1] NHTSA, DOT F 1700.7, Identifying Strategies to Study Drug Usage and Driving Functioning Among Older
Drivers, Final Report of Polypharmacy and Older Drivers, www.nhtsa.gov, 1-89, (December 2006).
[2] Lori Raye Court Reporters, Examination under Oath of Marcelline Burns, 1-62, (April 17 1998).
[3] Sofie Heuninckx, Filiep Debaere, Nicole Wenderoth, Sabine Verschueren, & Stephan P. Swinnen,
Ipsilateral Coordination Deficits and Central Processing Requirements Associated With Coordination as a
Function of Aging, 59B J. of Gerontology 5, 225, (2004).
[4] See infra note 9 at 465.
[5] Deborah J. Serrien, Stephan P. Swinnen, & George E. Stelmach, Age-Related Dererioration of
Coordinated Interlimb Behavior, 55B J. of Gerontology 5, 295, (2000).
[6] Konrad Wolfgang Kallus, Jeroen A.J. Schmitt, & David Benton, Attention, psychomotor functions and
age, Eur J. Nur, 2005, 44, at 469.
1. Source Cited: Thorndike EL, Bergman EO, Tilton J, and Woodyard E, Adult Learning, (1928),
Oxford England.
[7] Mark E. Williams M.D., The American Geriatrics Society’s Complete Guide to Aging and Health,
Harmony Books, NY, © by the Geriatrics Society, at 15, (1995)
[8] See Id. at 14.
[9] See supra note 9 at 482.
[10] NHSTA, DWI Detection and Standardized Field Sobriety Testing, Participant Manual, (2004), re: WAT at
VIII-11, re: OLS at VIII-14.
[11] See Id. re: 50lbs, at VIII-14.
[12] Dixie L Thompson, Jennifer Rakow, & Sara M. Perdue, Relationship between Accumulated Walking and
Body Composition in Middle-Aged Women, Official J. of the American College of Sports
Medicine, at 914, (Jan. 2004).
1. Source Cirted: Flegal K, M Carroll, C Ogden, and C Johnson, Prevalence and trends in obesity
among US adults, 1999-2000, JAMA 288, 1723-27, (2002).