Diabetes and the Counterfeit DUI
Information
courtesy of Lawrence Taylor - DUIblog
Contrary
to popular belief, police officers have no inherent skill and little
training in detecting levels of intoxication. In fact, they are
psychologically predisposed in a drunk driving investigation to
"see" what they expect to see, disregarding any alternative
explanations.
Let’s
take a look at one of those possibilities.....As everyone knows,
diabetics commonly experience hypoglycemia (low blood sugar levels).
And what are the symptoms? Slow and slurred speech, poor balance,
impaired motor control, staggering, drowsiness, flushed face, disorientation
-- in other words, the classic symptoms of alcohol intoxication.
This individual will look and act like a drunk driver to the officer,
and will certainly fail any DUI "field sobriety tests".
As one expert has observed, "Hypoglycemia (abnormally low levels
of blood glucose) is frequently seen in connection with driving
error on this nation’s roads and highways...Even more frequent
are unjustified DUIs or DWIs, stemming from hypoglycemic symptoms
that can closely mimic those of a drunk driver." From "Hypoglycemia:
Driving Under the Influence" in 8(1) Medical and Toxicological
Information Review Sept. 2003.
But,
of course, a Breathalyzer will clear him, right?
Wrong.
Ignoring for the moment the inherent inaccuracy and unreliability
of these machines, most suffer from a little-known design defect:
they do not actually measure alcohol! Rather, they use infrared
beams of light which are absorbed by any chemical compound (including
ethyl alcohol) in the breath which contains the "methyl group"
in its molecular structure; the more absorption, the higher the
blood-alcohol reading. The machine is programmed to assume that
the compound is "probably" alcohol. Unfortunately, thousands
of compounds containing the methyl group can register as alcohol.
One of these is "acetone". And a well-documented by-product
of hypoglycemia is a state called "ketoacidosis", which
causes the production of acetones in the breath. In other words,
the Breathalyzer will read significant levels of alcohol on a diabetic’s
breath where there may be little or none. See, for example, Brick,
"Diabetes, Breath Acetone and Breathalyzer Accuracy: A Case
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Study",
9(1) Alcohol, Drugs and Driving (1993).
But
this rarely happens, right? Fact: roughly one in seven sober drivers
on the road suffers from diabetes.
Law
Offices of Lawrence Taylor, Inc.
Practice
limited to DUI defense
Los Angeles, California
http://www.DUIcentral.com/
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