Voluntary Field Sobriety Tests

If you are pulled over for a DUI, remember, Field Sobriety Exercises (one-leg stand, walk and turn, horizontal gaze nystagmus (follow the pen/finger test)) are voluntary.  You have the right, and should, refuse to submit upon being requested by a law enforcement officer to perform them.  

Standardized field sobriety tests were created under a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the 1970s by having healthy, young police volunteers submit to various tasks in a controlled environment, without fear of being arrested or under any stress.  Your recorded performance of unnatural acts is then used in court to prove your normal faculties are impaired.  It is important to note there have been no independent studies to show what effect being scared, emotional, embarrassed, or having normal, everyday pains or discomforts would have on performing these exercises. 

Studies have shown that the most feared is public speaking with the fear of death coming in second.  What can be more frightful or embarrassing than being surrounded by law enforcement, having cars drive by while you are being instructed, only once, on the field sobriety exercises.  Law enforcement recruits are trained at the academy to only give the instructions once to a suspect and see how the individual remembers the instructions. However, in the law enforcement academy, new recruits are given multiple opportunities to correct mistakes in giving and performing field sobriety exercises by the instructor.  Since a law enforcement officer has no training to differentiate between someone’s performance based on their individual situation versus those young recruits in a controlled environment, it is an unfair measure of your normal faculties.  

So, if you are being asked by a law enforcement officer to perform voluntary field sobriety exercises, do not give up your rights, be polite and tell them NO THANK YOU. 

By Attorney David Migneault

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