People who are going to drink at a bar or a restaurant know that they shouldn’t consume so much alcohol that they are impaired when they try to drive home. However, these are clearly drinking establishments where alcohol consumption is the goal. As a result, they will look for ways to sober up quickly before they get in the car.
For instance, people are often worried about having a drink right before they leave, knowing that their BAC can increase on the road. They may spend the last half hour or hour at the bar simply talking to people and drinking a glass of water. Is that going to be enough for them to avoid a DUI?
Your BAC does not drop that fast
In many cases, spending an hour drinking water is not going to be nearly enough. Blood alcohol concentration just doesn’t decline that fast. The general rate is about 0.015% per hour. So if your blood alcohol concentration was at 0.1% when you decided to stop drinking and switch to water, it’s still not going to be down below the legal limit an hour later.
On top of that, you can certainly get a DUI even if you are under the legal limit. The police can still show that you are impaired in other ways, and they can decide to move ahead with the charges based on things like the results of a field sobriety test. So, even if spending an hour drinking water gets you down to 0.07% or something of this nature, that’s no guarantee that you won’t get pulled over and arrested on the way home.
As you can imagine, many people do get arrested when they think they took the proper steps to drive safely. If this happens to you, be sure you know what legal options you have.