All issues related to “drunk driving” come under a specific area called Driving under Influence (DUI) act. The name and the rules vary widely across all the states of Unites States of America. Driving a vehicle under the influence of alcohol/drugs come under this category. The vehicle can also be a boat or a aircraft as well as a horse drawn carriage.

Any law enforcement officer who observes suspicious driving behaviour is permitted to ask the driver to stop for a particular vehicle. There are several situations when a officer might ask a driver to stop, such as: The officer is investing an accident caused by the driver of the vehicle, the driver might stop at a checkpoint, the police might receive a report of erratic driving of a particular vehicle, the officer might notices any other kind of abnormalities and may ask the driver to stop the vehicle.

During the phase of investigation the officer tries to find out symptoms such as odour of alcoholic beverages, slurred speech or reddish eyes of the driver. Fumbling while speaking, droopy eyelids or flushed face also gives sufficient reasons to a police officer to continue with the investigation. The officer might ask the driver to step out of the vehicle if there are enough reasons to justify an investigation.

The officer might conduct a Field Sobriety Tests to see the eye movement of the suspect, see the balance by asking him/her to stand on one leg, counting in the finger and most popular is using a breatheanalyzer.

The officer arrests the suspect if there are sufficient evidence that the driver was under the influence of drugs/alcohol and conducts a chemical tests to find our BAC. The convicted person is released if the BAC is found out to be lesser than 0.08. In other cases the offender might be kept in a cell called drunk tank for a specific period. Serious punishment id followed if the BAC is above 0.15 to 0.20, such as increase in jail time, larger fines, longer DUI programmes and even installation of ignition interlock devices to identify if the driver is drunk. The device is disabled if the driver has been drinking. The punishment depends on the key enquiry which finds out if the driver’s faculties were impaired by the substances they consumed.