 Today, we're going to discuss the reasons why you should refuse to do field sobriety exercises even if you're completely sober. If you want to jump ahead to that countdown, you can go to this time right here. But before you do that, I want to say, if you're interested in this topic, I think it's important for you to know the general history of sobriety testing, how the test came about, and some of my thoughts and experience on it. If you're interested in that, stick around, I'll jump into that right now. If not, skip forward ahead. So how did sobriety tests come about? Back in the 70s, DUI caught Congress' attention based upon a number of all-call-related traffic deaths that were taking place in the United States. So Congress relied upon the newly formed Department of Transportation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, to help them problem solve and take actions toward saving lives. Now one of the first major tasks that NHTSA and DOT were given was to address the DUI fatality rate. And at the time, the nationwide average was approximately 50% of all fatalities were all call-related. Now the way NHTSA and DOT did this was they enlisted the help of behavioral psychologists with the Southern California Research Institute to help them identify the problems of DUI and formulate a solution that would overall reduce the number of deaths on the highway. Now with a federal DOT contract, the Southern California Research Institute sent researchers across the country to several major police departments and they spent some time learning what the cops were doing to investigate DUI's. Now keep in mind we're in the 70s here, so DUI was much different than what it is today. Very few arrests and the penalties were inconsistently lenient. Well after learning at the different police departments, the researchers brought their information back to the laboratory and began working on testing and formulating a nationwide standard in DUI investigations. If I remember correctly, there are three main goals of their program. They had to be accurate and reliable to preserve the same results over and over. They had to be durable with regard to the number of people that could be administered the field sobriety exercises as well as be durable for the field environment of doing them roadside. And finally they wanted an objective grading criteria so they could determine pass or fail, although pass or fail isn't used in the terminology in the books. But that study burnt the three test battery that was the genesis for the multi-million dollar DUI industry that's alive and thriving today. That three test battery, HGN, walk and turn, and the one leg stand is the nationwide standard. Everyone should be using at least these standard field sobriety exercises. And when an officer deviates from that, it raises red flags. Now I understand there are some departments in some states that choose to follow a different standard, but they're the exception, not the rule. So that leads us into why you should refuse to do the exercises. Welcome if you skipped ahead and for those of you that have been with me so far, let's get right down to the countdown. The number four reason to refuse to do roadside sobriety exercises, even if you're completely sober, is that the accuracy to determine whether someone is drunk or sober applies only if the tests are done properly. The instructions are given properly that is. And you have no idea how many cops are out there that have no idea how many clues they're supposed to be looking for, let alone what those clues are. And if you know what you're looking for, how can you grade my performance? If a cop is asked to do sobriety exercises and you get the feeling they don't know what they're doing, there's a really good chance they're just totally winging it. And sorry, I'm just not that comfortable putting my freedom on someone's hand who's just winging it. If I was completely sober and I got pulled over by a cop and I knew that he knew what he was doing, I might let him look at my eyes. That should give him 100% confidence that I'm sober. I'm not advising you to do that. I'm just telling you that that's the only time I would even consider allowing a cop to administer any test in me. The number three reason to refuse to do sobriety exercises, even if you're completely sober, is that to maintain the accuracy of the test, you can't be overweight. And I'm not sure if you've seen the national statistics on that, but United States, it's not looking very good. By the government's own standards at 6'3 and 250 pounds, I am obese. And I agree, I need to lose about 30 to 40 pounds. But the reliability of sobriety tests go out the window when people are overweight. And studies show that a lot of Americans are, in fact, overweight. If that's you, false positives lead to false arrests. Therefore, you should refuse to do the exercise. The number two reason to refuse to do the field sobriety exercises, even if you're completely sober, is that your bumps, bruises, and nervousness can lead towards balance issues that you don't consider a medical problem to disclose to the police officer. For instance, I spent a number of years jump from airplanes in the military. The lifestyle of a paratrooper take a serious toll on my body. My knees are jacked up, but it's not all the time. It's only when I move in certain positions or certain weather conditions. My shoulders have micro tears in them that aren't worthy of surgery, but can absolutely be debilitating when I move a certain way. If I'm walking down a line for the officer and I trigger one of those pains, I'll probably step on a line, stagger, and wince in pain. It's going to come off the officer that I'm playing a game and now he arrests me because he thinks I'm drunk. Not good. Finally, the number one and probably most important reason to refuse to do field sobriety exercises, even if you're completely sober. We need to start asserting our freedoms not to let the government overreach into our lives. We know they track our phones. We know they track our movements. We need to stand up for ourselves where we can. Now, I'm not in any way telling you to be rude. That's counterproductive towards the goal. We need to be gracious with our officers while still standing for the principles of freedom from government intrusion that this country was bound upon. Ready for their safety but don't let them search your car. My plan is for this to be part one of a four part series on sobriety exercises. I think this is a good introduction to the series and then I'll make a new video for each individual exercise. Then I'm considering doing maybe a bonus video outlining the alternative exercise like the finger and nose and the modified rhomburgs that they're out there. If that's something you're interested in, let me know in the comments. God bless. If you're in Florida and you need some legal advice, I'll put some contact information in the description below. Thanks for watching. Share and subscribe.