#nhtsa.

You see them on television; you may even see people attempting them on the side of the road.  Comedians call them “stupid people tricks,” but field sobriety tests (also known as FSTs) have existed as long as the enforcement of DUI laws.  For years, field sobriety tests varied among officers within the same law enforcement agency as well as from one agency to another.  Field sobriety tests were limited only by the officers’ collective imaginations. Today, most law enforcement agencies have adopted the field sobriety tests that have been standardized and are therefore theoretically more objective than others.  However, it should be noted that non-standardized field sobriety tests are still used and are even detailed in the officers’ DUI detection training manuals. In the 1970's the United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (which you will sometimes hear me refer to by its initials as NHTSA), funded research to evaluate which roadside field sobriety tests were the most accurate.  The research was conducted by the Southern California Research Institute (S.C.R.I.). In the original study, six different tests were considered.  These included the One-Leg Stand, Finger-To-Nose, Finger Count, Walk-and-Turn, Tracing (a paper and pencil exercise), and both the Vertical and Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus tests.         The researchers finally concluded that a three test battery - the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus, the Walk-and-Turn, and the One-Leg Stand, offered a reliable field sobriety testing procedure to distinguish which persons had blood alcohol contents above 0.10%.  Subsequent studies led NHTSA to conclude these tests were sufficiently reliable to distinguish blood alcohol above 0.08%.   It is important to note that these tests were originally designed to distinguish a suspect’s blood alcohol content level, not whether the suspect’s ability to drive was diminished.         The next step was to standardize these tests.  Additional research was therefore conducted to complete the development and validation of this sobriety test battery and to assess the feasibility of the tests in the field (e.g. on the side of the road). An additional study was performed in the field to validate the three tests outside a laboratory setting and to systematize the administrative and scoring procedures. Copyright © The Oberman & Rice Law Firm Steve Oberman, Attorney at Law, Certified Specialist in DUI Defense Law Sara Compher-Rice, Attorney at Law (865) 249-7200 www.duiknoxville.com www.tndui.com