DUI Forum

Ok, so who the hell am I? What’s my miserable DUI story that ended up with me sitting here on a Sunday night and poking around in Wordpress templates to create this site? Well it all started when I was driving home over the Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Oakland on a Monday night just a few weeks ago. I’ll be honest with you, I drank a few beers that night, but I had also been running around, dancing and Karaoke singing for several hours on end, and by the time I was ready to drive home I had no doubt that I was OK to drive. I like to think of myself as a responsible and careful driver, and there have been several occasions in my adult life where I’ve had too much to drink, knew it, and crashed on a friend’s couch for the night. What I’m trying to say here is that I don’t have any kind of macho misconceptions about “driving better when I’m drunk” or anything like that. So when I climbed into my car and jumped onto the Bay Bridge website on my cell phone to check out which on-ramps were open, I was feeling pretty much as sober as I had 6 hours ago when I arrived in the city. After I confirmed my route and put my phone away I navigated through the city to the Essex St. on-ramp and motored happily onto the bridge, glad that I had avoided the enormous clusterfuck of traffic that usually plagues my weeknight trips into the city.

Once I made my way through the big construction nightmare on the west end of the bridge, traffic was very light (it was 11:30PM on a Monday night after all). I accelerated up to my normal crusing speed in these circumstances, probably around 65-75 MPH and was zipping along in the 2nd lane from the right (my favorite, as it makes merging or changing lanes unnecessary for 95% of my journey home). After passing through Treasure Island I was picking up a little bit of speed on the down-slope, but since the traffic was light I didn’t think much of it until… Oh Dammit! I’m getting pulled over…

Well shit, I thought to myself, here’s a fine way to end an otherwise enjoyable evening! Oh well, too late to worry about it now. Might as well just pull over and get this over with. So I pulled over to the side of the road (this happened just as I was leaving the bridge, so there was a shoulder here) and after giving me some further instructions about exactly where to park over his loudspeaker the CHP officer walked up to the car and let me know I had been pulled over for speeding. He asked me I knew how fast I had been going and I answered honestly, “About 75 or 80.” He then asked me if I knew what the speed limit on the bridge was, and I replied that I thought it was probaly 65. Well here came my first shock of the night. The speed limit on the Bay Bridge, a 5 lane restricted access freeway, is *actually* 50 MPH. Now I’m from Chicago, where we know a thing or two about artificially low speed limits (Lake Shore Drive… 45?) but this one really took me by surprise. Anyway, I was mentally preparing myself to pay what I now knew was going to be a absolutely ridiculous speeding ticket when the officer asked me if I had had anything to drink that night. Again, I wasn’t about to lie to him, so I said that I had had a couple of drinks, and he asked me to step out of the car. I complied and he began asking me a series of questions: “Are you on any medication?” “Have you had any trouble sleeping lately?” “When was the last time you ate?” and so on. I now know that he was running a script designed to determine whether I was absolutely shit-faced and had no idea where or who I was. Since this was not the case, I answered his questions and he then started in with the “Field Sobriety Tests.” He asked me to stand with my feet togther and my head tilted back while I silently estimated 30 seconds of time. He asked me to touch my thumb to my fingertips while counting 1…2…3..4…4…3…1… He asked me to lift one leg and balance on the other foot. He asked me to track his finger while my eyes while he moved it back and forth in front of my face. I was patiently goign through with all of these tests and doing pretty well at them I thought and finally he got out the little portable breathalyzer machine and asked me to blow into it. He mentioned something about “Of course, this isn’t part of the implied consent test” or something like that, but I wasn’t sure what he meant and in any case, I wasn’t about to refuse this test. After he finished with that test, he cuffed me and put me in the back of his car, (my car got towed away) and we head on down the the CHP headquarters on Telegraph. They searched me here and told me that I’d be asked to do another breathalyzer test, and that this one *was* part of the implied consent law. He also explained that the breathalyzer test would not preserve a sample of my breath, so whatever reading it made would be final and incontestable. My other option was to get back into the patrol car and head up to the hospital for a blood test, which could be preserved and retested. This seemed like a less sketchy option to me, so I made my decision and we drove over to Alta Bates hospital in Berkeley. After a nurse drew my blood here, we went back down to Oakland and I was finally read my rights and booked into North County Jail at about 2:30 AM.

I could go into great detail about my time in jail, but suffice to say, it was one of the most horrible and frustrating experiences of my life. After being told that I was to be held for a few hours and released, I ended up sitting around for the next 12 hours, missing work and being unable to get in touch with anyone to let them know where I was or what had happened to me. The cell I was placed in for the first 3 hours or so *did* have a phone in it, but since I figured I’d be getting out before anybody I knew was even awake, I just decided to sit tight and wait it out for the next few hours. After I was moved into another cell with no phone, and left there for the next 8 or 9 hours, I began to realize that perhaps I hadn’t made the right decision. At any rate, I finally did get out and caught a cab down to East Oakland where I paid something like $225 to get my car out of the impound. While I was waiting for the guys there to bring it around I met a nice guy who recommended a good attorney. Or anyway, I *hope* he’s a good attorney as I did end up retaining his services. As I continue to update this site, I’ll let you all know how that works out

Aannnyway, to wrap things up here, I wanted to summarize what I learned during the night of my arrest. First of all, I did a little research on this whole “implied consent” thing that the arresting officer kept mumbling about. As it turns out, *none* of the roadside tests and questions, including the breathalyzer, are required by (California) law. You can refuse all of these and while it will dramatically increase the likelihood of your being “taken down to the station,” it won’t automatically lead to a license suspension. The only thing that *is* required by law are the in-station breathalyzer or the in-hospital blood test. Next, I learned that jail operates on a completely different schedule than the rest of the universe. They may not *want* to hold you there for 12 hours, but they’re just too inefficient and unmotivated to get it done faster in many cases. But who cares, right? There’s nothing but criminals in there! I’ve learned a lot of other things about the various intracacies of DUI law since that night, but these will have to wait for another post. But perhaps the most important thing I learned is… The speed limit on the Bay Bridge is 50MPH! But I’ll talk more about that particular kick in the balls in another post. For now, I bid you good night…