They have breathalyzers and blood tests. Field sobriety tests are not there to help police arrest drunk drivers, they're there to help police arrest whomever they want to.
> I wish we would focus on the actual crimes the police are there to stop as much as we do the police reform.
The U.S. is one of the most punishment-happy countries in the world. Nearly every politician vows to be "tough on crime". This is an incredible thing to say given the past 50 years of policing and justice in the U.S. Won't somebody please think of the children!?
> I am neither left nor right
The "center" is constantly moving and has been, on average, shifting far to the right over the last 20 years. Anyone who claims to be a centrist is therefore either changing their politics with the wind, or was far right all along.
You're wrong about that. "Sobriety" isn't limited to alcohol. You'll notice that most laws against drunk driving are actually against being "intoxicated" or "impaired". Breathalyzers and blood tests are for gathering indisputable evidence.
Field sobriety tests are there to determine if you're motor skills are impaired. If an officer observers a person driving erratically and they can't walk a straight line or touch their own nose, they shouldn't be driving. You can be arrested for DUI [of sleeping pills].
The only time police would specify a DUI was for alcohol is if a breathalyzer or blood test showed that. Even if the officer says there was a beer can on the floor and they smelled like alcohol, they could be under the legal limit and be on any number of other substances so the DUI wouldn't specify alcohol.
There are plenty of reasons that someone might not be able to demonstrate this to the subjective opinion of an officer and be completely unimpaired and competent at driving. e.g. people with atypical minds or bodies
Police generally ask people to do these tests when they have already made up their mind about someone being impaired. The only point of the test, practically, is generate standardized documentation. It is a dog and pony show.
Other countries that have serious anti-driving-impairment programs don't use these types of subjective tests -- they test people for using the substances directly.
These days, so much of that will be recorded on video, from the dash cam to the body cam, it's usually cut and dry that the person accused is under the influence of something.
> people with atypical minds or bodies
This is a reasonable concern so I don't want to dismiss it but this isn't even close to the typical situation and, to emphasize, the reason for the stop is usually bad driving and the officer is looking for an explanation. Before a sobriety test is administered, there is already a cause for being pulled over. So people who can't pass a sobriety test because they have a physical or mental reason they can't only have that one piece of evidence against them removed.
I'm sure you can construct a hypothetical case where a person with a speech impairment, an inner ear deformaty and who's eyes shake when moving left and right gets arrested for DUI because they appear impaired but they weren't pulled over for those reasons.
Not only does it cause significant problems for people who are unjustly jailed and charged for crimes they didn't commit -- but it also lets drunk drivers off the hook when the flimsy evidence fails to convict. These aren't hypotheticals, both are very common.
Police in the US simply need to be equipped with roadside chemical tests for substances. They exist, they just simply don't use them.
Here's is an example of what other countries do:
https://adf.org.au/insights/roadside-drug-testing/
> The officer takes a sample of your saliva by placing an absorbent collector in the mouth or on the tongue. The sample is then analysed at the roadside. If the test is positive, it must be confirmed by laboratory testing before charges can be laid.
Doesn't that sound like a better solution than: "The officer makes you stand on one leg and say the alphabet backwards, if they don't like they way you did it, you are charged with DUI"?
> I'm sure you can construct a hypothetical case where a person with a speech impairment, an inner ear deformaty and who's eyes shake when moving left and right gets arrested for DUI because they appear impaired but they weren't pulled over for those reasons.
The more common, and even more scary issue, is that sometimes people undergoing medical emergencies are arrested for DUI and sent to jail instead of a hospital. Which is again another situation that would be avoided entirely by roadside testing. This is such a common issue for diabetics that police normally do train to recognize the difference, but since they are not medical professionals and don't have adequate equipment, they still often confuse the two.
Watch this dashcam video: https://www.wsmv.com/2025/10/02/retired-deputy-arrested-dui-...
Maybe. Or they were pulled over for being black, or having tattoos, or being really hot, or because they criticized police brutality on social media, or because the officer needs to hit their arrest quota by the end of the month, or because they're driving an expensive car and the officer thinks they'll have lots of cash they can legally rob via civil asset forfeiture. We have far, far too many examples of all of these happening to say with any certainty that the police officer actually suspects anyone of an actual crime.
By the way, I have called in drivers who were badly impaired before. One kept driving up onto the curb, on the sidewalk and grass (next to a school!), then swerving back nearly into the oncoming lane, then stopping in the middle of the road, etc. Another kept swerving toward the concrete barriers on the highway, and when I passed them, they looked visibly asleep. Both times, the cops didn't care. They didn't send anyone. They sounded annoyed that I was bothering about that crap. The police do not care whether people are driving drunk or not, just like they do not care whether an active shooter is gunning down kids in an elementary school. They don't care if a violent dad with a restraining order has kidnapped his kids and is about to murder them, even when the mom tells them exactly where he has taken them. Their interests are orthogonal to the just enforcement of the law.
Yeah, good point, they were probably pulled over for being black.
