The local news channel in Lawrence, Kansas did a little story on ways to determine whether you have consumed enough alcohol to be over the legal limit. You can see the video here. It discusses the personal breath alcohol testing devices that people can buy, the machines in bars that are supposed to tell you your BAC, and it shows the van that the Lawrence Police Department has which houses a mobile Intoxilyzer 8000 for DUI breath testing out in the field.
One of the problems with Kansas DUI laws is that no one can accurately estimate when they have had enough alcohol to be over the legal limit. That is why it is better to not drink anything before you drive a car. The police machines are not accurate, but some gizmo you buy off of the internet, or pay a couple of quarters for in a bar is not likely to be accurate either. The websites you can visit that will tell you how much a person can drink, given a specific weight, are helpful guides but you cannot depend on them to keep you out of legal trouble. Your level of impairment depends on your metabolism, what you have eaten recently, the amount of sleep you’ve had and a host of other biological factors. The machine that the police use for court in Kansas DUI cases is based on averages and cannot factor in the biological differences in human beings like body temperature, breath temperature, partition ratio, hematocrit levels, and the presence of compounds which may be mistaken for alcohol in the breath. So, who knows what anyone will blow when the police demand that you do so? People who are not impaired will blow over the limit and people who are impaired may blow under it.
The legal limit for DUI in Kansas is .08 grams of alcohol per 210 liters of breath. Think about that for a minute. One little M&M candy weighs about a gram. Picture 210 one-liter soda pop bottles, or a 55 gallon drum. Now, if less than a gram out of 55 gallons of your breath is alcohol, you are busted. One-thousanth of a gram, think about how little that is, can make an enormous difference as to whether you are DUI or lose your driving privileges for a long time. If you blow .149 on your first Kansas DUI, you lose your license for 30 days. If you blow one-thousanth of a gram more, .150, you lose it for a full year followed by one year of blowing into an ignition interlock device. That is a big difference based on a microscopic amount of alcohol.
Your freedom, your job and a whole lot of your money are on the line every time you subject yourself to this crapshoot. The best way to minimize your exposure to getting charged with a DUI in Kansas or Missouri, whether you are in fact guilty or innocent, is to not drink, at all, before you drive. Designate a driver, get a taxi or other ride TO the bar so no one will be tempted to drive when it is time to leave, and otherwise take precautions. You cannot know what your blood alcohol content is, you cannot really trust the websites or personal BAC machines, and you have no idea what the police device is going to say. Your BAC is always a moving target and the most microscopic amount of alcohol can make a big difference in the quality of your life. You don’t want to trust your life or freedom to any of these machines.