Most cases involving drunk driving are actually heavily dependent on the opinion of the police officer in charge of the arrest. Unfortunately this opinion tends to be subjective more often than not. It is more than a little bit disturbing therefore that it is this officer who is largely responsible for determining what type of criminal charges the driver in question will have to face, whether or not the driver’s license will be suspended, and whether or not he or she will subsequently be found guilty when facing trial. The “expert” opinion of the police officer in turn depends on his or her ability to assess the intoxication level of the subject based on such factors as driving, slurring, flushed features, and many more. The way that the subject answers questions, as well as his or her performance on field sobriety tests will also be taken into consideration.

The question that this then brings up is just how qualified is the typical police officer to determine levels of intoxication in a subject? A series of tests were conducted recently by researchers at the Alcohol Behavior Research Laboratory of Rutger University, in which there were two groups of subjects. In the first part of the test, social drinkers were placed in a room while other subjects were observed and questioned. Each of these subjects either had different levels of alcohol or had none at all. They were each asked questions by the witnesses, who were afterwards asked to make a judgment on the supposed state of intoxication of the various subjects. The tests showed that social drinkers were not any better or worse at determining whether or not a person was intoxicated than anyone else.

In the second part of the test, bartenders were subjected to the same experiment, but this time in a cocktail lounge setting. Surprisingly, even this group of “expert” observers only managed to target one of four subjects correctly. Now it was the turn of the police officers. The officers in this group were experienced in DUI cases, and were therefore presumed to be able to pinpoint which of the subjects were drunk with a greater degree of accuracy, right? Not quite. This time, the officers were split into two groups, with one group given the test in impersonal laboratory conditions, while the second group was given the test under conditions that were typically encountered at drunk driving traffic stops. The results were surprising to say the least. While the police officers that were given the test in arrest conditions fared considerably better than the other test subjects, the difference was not significant. The officers that were given the test under laboratory conditions on the other hand were not at all any more accurate than the other subjects! All in all, the test showed that social drinkers, bartenders-and police officers-only managed to pinpoint which of the subjects were actually intoxicated only 25 percent of the time.