Washington drunk driving jurisprudence, like that of many other states, has gone through numerous different iterations over the years. At one point in time driving under the influence in Seattle, for example, was looked over as a negligible crime. If you were too impaired to drive you were just given a ride home by the police, told to call up someone, or forced to hike home. Over time, as certain groups started to organize around stopping DUIs (students against intoxicated driving, mothers against inebriated driving, etc.) they began to fight for tougher rules hostile to intoxicated driving.
As those rules were approved, the penalties of a drunk driving conviction increased in comparison to the degree of discretion afforded cops and prosecutors decreased. The rules have not gone so far as to be officially recognized as an “exception” to the Constitution (the implied consent to a breath test, which in truth is a breach of your fifth amendment right to not testify against yourself). Furthermore, as DUI seizures have become a more high profile misdeed to report on, cops, it seems, have become increasingly more vigilant in arresting people for driving under the influence, even going so far as to stop them for no justifiable reason to check them for driving under the influence (I know, it goes against common sense to stop a person to check them for driving under the influence when they show no external signs of drunk driving – as your Seattle driving under the influence attorney why that is, maybe they’ll possess an reply).
They’ve even gone so far as to stop individuals for glancing the white lane line differentiating lanes one instance. For example, let’s say you are driving along I-5 in Seattle, take an exit onto one of the streets, and in so doing you touch or cross over the white line denoting the line of traffic for only one second. I know you all have done it – what about when taking a pretty quick bend and you cut it off just a bit to make the turn easier? Well, what if, based on this single act only, a police pulled you over to investigate you for a Seattle drunk driving?
Well, thankfully, the Washington State Supreme Court has determined that the law, which states that someone is to remain in their line of traffic “as reasonably as practicable” implies that from time to time you may perhaps go outside of the lane. It is only if going outside of the traffic lane creates a safety risk that a solitary violation warrants a traffic stop.
This is exactly the reason why if you are detained and later arrested for drunk driving in Washington, whether it be Seattle, Kirkland, Kent, Bellevue, Everett, or anywhere else in between, that you retain a excellent Seattle DUI attorney and endeavor to commit to memory exactly what occurred that caused the stop in addition to what occurred after. It can be the difference between dismissal of your driving under the influence case and guilty verdict.
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