What are Field Sobriety Tests?
Field Sobriety Tests (FST’s) are psychophysical tests used to assess a person’s physical and/or mental impairment. These tests focus on the abilities needed for safe driving. Most of the more reliable psychophysical tests are known as “divided attention” tasks. They require a person to concentrate on more than one task at the same time. To safely drive a car, a person needs to be able to simultaneously control steering, breaking, and acceleration; react to a constantly changing driving environment; and perform many other tasks. Alcohol affects one’s ability to adequately divide attention, thus causing drivers to concentrate on more difficult tasks while ignoring simpler ones (i.e. ignore a traffic signal while concentrating on one’s speed). Even if impaired, most people can successfully concentrate on a single task fairly well, but when impaired, most cannot successfully divide their attention between multiple tasks at once.
Field sobriety tests, “FSTs”, are ways in which the police officer can establish probable cause to arrest you and offer an approved test. You must take every approved blood, breath or urine test offered to you within a 3 hour period after you were operating a vehicle in order to comply with the Indiana Implied Consent Law, but you are not required to take any field sobriety tests. Respectfully decline to take any field sobriety tests, including the PBT (portable or preliminary breath test). If in doubt, ask the officer whether the test is one required by the implied consent law. Be very careful; because FSTs are not “testimonial”, they are not considered selfÂincriminating, and can be used against you even if you are not given the Miranda warning.
Field sobriety tests are tests given to drivers by police officers at the scene of a traffic stop to determine if the driver is driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Typical field sobriety tests include asking the DUI suspect to stand on one leg, touch their nose, walk in a straight line heel-to-toe and recite the alphabet forwards or backwards. Police officers may also perform a blood alcohol test using a portable breath analysis machine.
The field sobriety tests are a series of exercises designed to determine whether a suspect is in control of his or her mental and physical faculties, i.e., whether or not they are impaired by the effects of alcohol. Unlike Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) tests, field sobriety tests are highly subjective and are not required by law. In most cases, field sobriety tests are used only for auxiliary evidence-gathering, as the officer has usually already decided to arrest the suspect by the time the tests are administered. Given the subjectivity of field sobriety tests, most lawyers advise against taking them, since they are rather unreliable and will only hurt a defendant’s case. Examples of standard field sobriety tests include: the one-leg stand, the walk-and-turn, and the horizontal-gaze nystagmus test.
Field Sobriety Tests (FST’s) are psychophysical tests used to assess a person’s physical and/or mental impairment. They focus on the abilities needed for safe driving. Most of the more reliable psychophysical tests are known as “divided attention” tasks. They require a person to concentrate on more then one task at the same time. To safely drive a car, a person needs to be able to simultaneously control steering, breaking, and acceleration; react to constantly changing driving environment; and perform many other tasks. Alcohol affects one’s ability to adequately divide attention, thus causing drivers to concentrate on more difficult tasks while ignoring simpler ones (i.e. ignore a traffic signal while concentrating on one’s speed). Even if impaired, most people can successfully concentrate on a single task fairly well, but when impaired, most drivers cannot successfully divide their attention between multiple tasks at once.
