Is It Common For People To Get Behind The Wheel And Think, “I Just Had One Or Two, It’s No Big Deal. I Don’t Feel Intoxicated, I’m Okay To Drive?”

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Few people get behind the wheel believing they are intoxicated after only a couple of drinks. At the risk of overly generalizing, people who are smaller in stature, lighter weight, and women tend to blow a little bit higher than men. The average body temperature of a woman is slightly higher than that of a man. With tests measuring breath to determine the blood alcohol content, the higher the body temperature causes a lower the partition ratio. With a lower partition ratio between the breath and blood, there’s an overstating of the blood alcohol reading. Unfortunately, this distinction between the sexes that has gained only passive recognition in New Jersey, which does not correlate to the blood-breath ratio with body temperature. Instead, it deals with volume because women, generally speaking, tend to be smaller than men. Also, older people don’t have the same lung capacity as younger people.

Our Supreme Court carved out a distinction between women over the age of 60 and others. Women who are 60 years old are not expected to give a full breath sample of 1.5 liters as measured by the Alcotest 7110. If a woman blows at least 1.2 liters but not more than 1.5 liters, the machine will register it. Officers may still charge that person with a breath test refusal. But the court will acquit that person of the refusal charge. More likely than not, they will be found not guilty of the DWI as well. Without a breath test result, most of the observational evidence becomes ambiguous. That ambiguity is what we call reasonable doubt.

Do All Alcoholic Drinks Generally Have The Same Potency Or Could Just Sticking To Beer Or Other Drinks With Low Percentages Of Alcohol Keep Me From Getting Charged With DWI?

The concentrations of alcohol vary depending on the type of beverage. However, alcohol is alcohol. The only reason you can drink a greater quantity of beer is because the percentage of alcohol is less than that in wine or liquor. You’re drinking a higher volume of liquid. If you have three or four beers, it’s the same as having a glass or two of wine or a shot or two of hard liquor. Even though that shot of liquor is consumed in a smaller volume, it still has the same amount of alcohol as a beer. Therefore, it doesn’t really matter what you’re drinking. If it has alcohol, and you drink enough of it, it’s going to be absorbed by your body, distributed through your body, and eliminated by your body the same way.

Often, People Talk About Eating Enough While They Drink TO Absorb THE Alcohol. Is This True? Will It Reduce THE Bac Level Before Someone Gets Behind THE Wheel?

When you drink alcohol on an empty stomach, your body will absorb it more quickly. You can think of the absorption and elimination of alcohol over time as a curve over. If you drink quickly, that curve’s going to spike higher, but then decline at a fairly steady rate. If you drink on a full stomach as opposed to an empty stomach, the food will act as a physical obstruction to your body’s absorption of the alcohol. As a result, your peak will not be as sharp, it will happen a little bit later in time, and the high point of that peak is going to be lower. However, once it hits the peak, the rate of elimination is the same, regardless of whether you downed a few shots on an empty stomach or if you drank a few glasses of wine with a meal. At some point, your body’s absorption of the alcohol is going to reach a peak, and the elimination will occur at a fairly steady rate. Eating probably helps with keeping you sober longer, but only because food physically obstructs and absorbs the alcohol first before your body absorbs it.

For more information on DWIs In New Jersey, a free 20 min phone consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling (732) 218-9090 today.