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Many people wonder if they found themselves in the unfortunate
circumstance where they got pulled over
after having consumed alcohol, which is better--
to take a breath test or a blood test?
The advantage of a breath test is
that if you consume something other than alcohol,
such as marijuana, or ***, a drug, that of breath test
will not show drugs in your system
because the breathalyzer only tests for alcohol.
Now, if you're under the influence of something
and it's not alcohol, and an officer administers a breath
test, and you come up 00, but it's obvious that you're under
the influence of something, it's reasonable to assume that
the law enforcement agency might seek thereafter to request
blood from you.
So it's not full proof.
The downside with a breathalyzer is
that you don't have any preservation of evidence.
So you can't retest it.
With a blood test, law enforcement agents
are required to preserve your blood so that you can then
seek to retest it.
And I would suggest if you get pulled over
and you feel that you're not under the influence, that you
may have had a glass of wine with dinner,
very little alcohol, and you don't trust the law enforcement
agency to do a blood test, so then you
can seek to preserve, and have the blood retested.
Additionally of note, is that if you take a breathalyzer test
and you come up 0.08 or higher, you're
going to get immediate notice of the suspension of your driver's
license.
Whereas if you take a blood test,
it may take several months before it's
tested by the law enforcement agency.
So it does have the effect of delaying any type of license
suspension until the blood results come back.