Austin DWI Attorney Blog : Austin DWI Lawyer & Attorney : Law Office of Ken Gibson : Texas DUI Defense

A new law, which is being called the “Extreme DWI Law”, took effect on September 1. This new law enhances the punishment for anyone with .15, or higher, alcohol content in their blood or breath, taking a DWI offense from a Class B to a Class A misdemeanor.

This new law carries with it a possible sentence of up to a year in jail and $4,000 in fines, even for first-timers.

This is just another example of the enhancement that can occur when you provide a breath or blood sample. If you don’t give a breath or blood sample, then the .15 enhancement is irrelevant.

In this session, like in previous one, some state legislators targeted drunk drivers but most of those proposals, seem to be going nowhere. Here are some of the bills and their status three weeks before the Legislature adjourns. .

Bill Goal Status

• SB 231 To revoke driving privileges of anyone with two convictions. In committee

• HB 99 Third-degree felony for anyone with a previous conviction. House calendar

• HB 101 A hotline to report suspected cases of impaired driving. In committee

• HB 189 Mandating ignition interlock for any DWI conviction. Attached to other bill

• HB 237 To mark driver’s license of anyone with a prior conviction. In committee

• HB 3477 Ten-year driver’s license suspension after five convictions. To full House

Fortunately, the Legislature seems distracted with cutting education funding, cutting back who can vote, and making sure the police don't give immigrants any protection from deportation even when they are witnesses to a crime, to care much about DWIs this session.

The City of Austin has decided to replace their current BAT Bus(Breath Alcohol Test Bus) with a new improved BAT Bus.

The city agreed to buy a breath alcohol testing bus so officers don’t have to make the trip to the county jail.

The new Bat Bus will have to stations for Intoxilyzer 5000s as well as workstations for the officers to review the videotapes of the incident and prepare the offense reports.

Futher, there will be City Marshalls on hand to transport folks who have been arrested to the jail facility. This will allow officers like the one they call “the Machine” to get back on the street faster. The Machine currently holds the record for making 7 arrests in one night.

“Typical, DWI arrest takes between three and four hours,” Austin police Cmdr. Patti Robertson said. “It narrows it down. Takes off 3/4 of that time. They have all the paperwork, turns it over to the officers on the bus.”

DWI has become big business in Austin.

“We are at 800 per 100,000 people for DWI arrests…” Robertson said. “What that means is we are ……the highest in the state for DWI arrests. I think that speaks volumes.” It certainly does.

There are approximately 10 different agencies in and around Austin that are all competing for grant money related to DWIs. The question then becomes, “Could this possibly motivate officer to make more and more arrests?” My belief……ABSOLUTELY!

A Virgin Atlantic Pilot found out the hard way that the Adkins diet can affect the breath test when he was removed from a transatlantic flight after failing a breathalyser test. He has finally been cleard of this charge after it was discovered that his low-carbohydrate diet triggered a false reading.

Subsequent blood tests on the pilot showed a blood-alcohol reading of just over a fifth of the limit set for airline pilots - which in turn is a quarter of the drink-drive level.

The pilot’s nightmare began when he went through the security checks for flight crew one of the guards thought he could smell alcohol on his breath.

The pilot was allowed to board the plane but about 45 minutes before take-off police got on the aircraft and breathalysed the pilot in the cockpit using a machine calibrated to aviation levels. The pilot failed this test and was escorted off the plane.

A standby crew was called and the pilot was taken to the police station, where blood tests were taken.

He was suspended from duty and released on bail.

The pilot’s blood was sent it to a laboratory where they found only a minimal blood alcohol reading. After the lab tested two more samples, he was exonerated.

Even non-drinkers are capable of producing trace elements of alcohol in their bloodstream, which would explain the level in the pilot’s blood.

The breathalyser reading was attributed to the pilot’s low–carbohydrate diet, which can affect the smell of a person’s breath and their metabolism.

Breathalysers mainly detect ethanol (the type of alcohol found in drinks) But some machines are unable to distinguish ethanol from acetone, a chemical that is produced by people on low-carbohydrate diets such as the Atkins diet. In normal circumstances this is not a problem but with the alcohol limit in the aviation industry is set at about a quarter of the normal “intoxication” level (.02) even these traces can result in a positive reading.

Where this is most likely to cause problems is when a person has been drinking, but not to the level of being intoxicated (.08). You then add the fact that the person is on a low carbohydrate diet, which will produce acetone in their breath, and there is a strong likelihood you will end up with a unreliable result from the breath testing machine.