We all should be familiar with the stricter DUI penalties in place in Maryland as of October 1, 2016. Police throughout Maryland are doing whatever it takes to catch as many drunk drivers as possible to keep roads and highways safe. Over the past few years, there have been far too many fatal accidents caused by drunk drivers and police want to put an end to that. We have just made it through the busiest time of the year for DUI arrests with holiday parties and New Years.
Maryland State Police recently unveiled a Mobile Breath Test Truck that they can set up at DUI checkpoints to make the DUI arrest process much quicker. This is bad news for drunk drivers on the roads because this means that police can process a drunk driver much faster than they used to. In a typical DUI arrest, a police officer will pull you over, smell alcohol on your breath, ask you to submit to a preliminary breath test and/or perform field sobriety tests. Based on results of these tests, the police officer will then arrest you for DUI. Next, the officer will have to transport you to the police station to administer the official breathalyzer test. The results of that test are used in your case. This process took a significant amount of time to transport an offender from the scene of the arrest to the station. With the mobile breath test truck, officers can now perform the official breathalyzer test at the scene of the arrest and continue to make additional arrests.
You should always think twice about drinking and driving, but there is even more reason now to call an Uber or Lyft instead of taking the risk to drive. Police are now more likely to catch you driving drunk on the roads than before.
