Keeping You Informed: Effective 09/01/2011, the Texas legislature passed the Abdallah Khader Act. This bill makes driving while intoxicated with a blood-alcohol content level of 0.15% a Class A misdemeanor (which carries a penalty of up to a year in jail instead of a maximum of 180 days). The bill also makes the crime of intoxication assault, in which the victim is left in a vegetative state, a second-degree felony (which carries a penalty of two to 20 years instead of two to 10 years).

Texas DWI Testing Procedures

Texas Driving While Intoxicated Attorney

In most cases, when an officer pulls over a driver suspecting of driving while intoxicated, the officer will test the driver using a breath test. Unfortunately, this is not always accurate. A blood test would be more accurate and would easily allow for retests in order to check the veracity of the first test. But given that this is less convenient for officers and drivers, the breath test is typically used.

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Breath tests are done by a machine named the Intoxilyzer 5000. This machine essentially checks infrared light absorption caused by alcohol in the breath. But there are numerous problems with this method. Opponents of the device have noted that the Intoxilyzer can pick up other substances commonly found in breath and mistake them for alcohol.

Furthermore, the manufacturer of the device does not guarantee its accuracy for any purpose whatsoever. Both the manufacturer and the Texas Department of Public Safety do not allow the accuracy of the device to be tested by anyone other than law enforcement agencies. These considerations raise a number of red flags about the accuracy of the Intoxilyzer.

The Intoxilyzer is also capable of preserving breath samples in order to have them tested using a method called gas chromatography. This method would be much more accurate than the infrared method currently used, but the Department of Public Safety explicitly states that law enforcement officers are not required to preserve the breath samples for later tests, so the tests themselves cannot be contested in court very easily.

But the worst part is that the Intoxilyzer is designed to work on a perfectly average human. Any number of factors could artificially inflate the blood alcohol concentration measurement that the Intoxilyzer reports, including differences in height, weight, muscle density, lung capacity, temperature, or blood composition. The bottom line is that these tests are far from infallible and your DWI charge should rest on much more than a breath test.

If you need a Texas drunk driving lawyer to help fight your case, contact the Dallas DUI Lawyers at Grossman Law Offices.


Related articles:
Breathalyzer accuracy
Blood alcohol level
Types of DWI cases

Questions answered in this article:
What do breathalyzers test for?
How accurate is a breathalyzer test?
How accurate are breathalyzers?


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