Show J F. F I Campus Recount Volunteers Get Drunk For Police by hv Leslie Vance t On November 20 and 21 the West Valley Police Department paid volunteers 20 for f four ur hours of drinking This was part of the Field Sobriety Testing training course course where officers learned to perform the new sobriety tests and identify drunk c r drivers dri verso Detective Jene Lyd Lyday y a certified training officer at West Valley Police Department stressed the impo importance tance of developing reliable field sobriety tests and training officers to give these new tests Lyday said that while the old tests which were single attention tests like walk the line touch your r nose and coin catch were good for identifying the seriously impaired driver 16 percent to 20 perc percent nt alcohol content in the blood they were not able to identify the driver with an alcohol level of 10 percent Lyday called these drivers the most dangerous of all because although they knew they had drunk enough to feel good they also had the I can handle it attitude They did not recognize the fact that their motor responses were impaired Three tests ests were developed in response to a request from the federal government and the National Traffic Highway Safety Commission to develop ways to identify the 1 10 percent driver These tests were the Horizontal Gaze the Divided Attention Test and the Leg Raise The test test that proved most reliable was the Horizontal Gaze Test is the involuntary jerking of the eyes which is a normal response that thatis is amplified by alcohol Studies found that the more alcohol consumed the sooner the onset of Officers are trained to perform and evaluate this test which consists of the officer holding up a finger and having the driver follow it from dead center of the eye to the outer corner of the eye The officer then looks for one of these three things things- smooth pursuit minimum at maximum deviation at the point of the corner of the eye and us before 45 degrees The second most reliable test is the Divided Attention Test It has been proven that the 10 percent driver could pass a single attention test because he could concentrate all his efforts to performing one thing However when asked to perform several things simultaneously in a limited time span this driver was unable to t perform satisfactory The Leg Raise test is similar to the Di Divided Attention Test as it asked the driver to follow several pie pieces es of instructions in 30 seconds Statistics show that three out of four drinkers are 10 percent Out of this 75 percent 60 percent are in accidents involving fatalities Yet only 25 percent of all DUIs DUI's arrested are at 10 percent alcohol level Lyday said it was necessary to develop these tests that could identify the 10 percent driver so they could be taken off the road These new tests do stand up in court When speaking of an arrest situation Lyday said other factors are involved Driving patterns reaction to officers and other little clues help officers determine whether the driver should be arrested or not |