No one expects or plans to drive while intoxicated. Sometimes, though, even the best-laid plans can result in the ‘surprise’ DWI as a former client learned the hard way. He set out to party with a plan in place. If he drank too much, he’d crash on his buddy’s sofa and spend the night. Before he started drinking, he set his alarm to wake up in time for work the next morning. Unfortunately, he underestimated the strength of his hangover.

Waking up the next morning in time for work, he headed out the door with an excessive blood alcohol content (BAC). He felt fine to drive, but the alcohol he’d consumed throughout the night hadn’t had enough time to dissipate. As fate would have it, he got pulled over. He was pretty shaken when the officer asked him to perform a field sobriety test. He hadn't had a drink for hours and thought he’d slept it off responsibly, but instead of arriving at work, he was under arrest for an alcohol-related driving offense. 

The recipe for a ‘hangover DWI’ is simple:  Consume so much alcohol that even after six hours of sleep, the average human body hasn't processed enough alcohol to bring the BAC under the legal limit. Consider the science behind it. A client who drinks him or herself to a .18% BAC and then stops drinking at 2:00 a.m. is likely to experience a decrease in BAC by roughly .015% per hour depending on body weight, metabolism and other factors. At 8:00 a.m. the next morning as the client puts the key in the ignition, he – or she – is still toting a .09% BAC, enough in most states to get arrested. 

Aside from not drinking excessively, my next best advice is to purchase a personal breathalyzer. Anyone can attempt to do the math without a breathalyzer, but chances are pretty good that after the first few drinks, many people have no idea how many additional drinks they’ve had or what was in them. A breathalyzer will cost a lot less than legal fees, not to mention other costs such as court fines and increased insurance rates. Another prevention tip is to get informed about alcohol consumption. There are great websites (DrinkingandDriving.org, National Highway & Transportation Safety 'ABCs of BAC', National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers article) to help accomplish this. A little education and prevention will go a long way toward avoiding a ‘surprise’ arrest – and toward saving lives. 

Often referred to as a 'hangover DWI', education and prevention can help drivers avoid one of the most unexpected of alcohol-related driving offenses.