Have you ever wondered how police officers spot and process a suspected drunk drivers? A person might be innocent until proven guilty, but most police officers know within minutes whether or not the person behind the wheel is drunk, and that’s thanks to driving under the influence (DUI) detection skills they’re taught before they head out on patrol.
Florida drunk drivers have even more of a reason to worry now that law enforcement have spent taken a course to make them more adept at catching drunk drivers. Held at the Florida Public Safety Institute, the course involved police officers attending a wet lab.
Wondering what a wet lab is? For the purpose of this training, it consisted of Florida attorneys, local law enforcement, and a few residents drinking alcohol for four hours.
During the wet lab the drinkers were monitored and served enough alcohol to get them to the point where they were just slightly over the legal limit of .08. They chose that threshold because those are the people who are most likely to be drunk drivers, they are most likely to be risk takers, and they are the hardest people to catch when they do drink and drive.
Officers in the lab assessed the drinkers and performed field sobriety tests with them, and the results weren’t surprising: they found all of the officers participating decided they would have arrested the drinkers. An added bonus to the experiment was that both the officers and the attorneys involved saw first hand how alcohol can affect everyone differently.
As for the participants, a few of them learned that they aren’t great at judging whether or not they are OK to drive after drinking. Some would have got behind the wheel because they thought they were fine to drive, and that decision could have serious consequences for them and everyone on the road with them.
Thanks to the DUI wet lab, Florida police are even more equipped to hit the road this summer and crack down on drunk drivers. If you’re driving in the state this summer, make sure you don’t drink before driving. It could be you they’re testing their new skills out on.