During the winter season, it's easy to get a little holiday cheer going with a drop or two of Kahlua in your coffee or a glass of wine at dinner. However, if you get pulled over by the police on the way home, you may be understandably anxious about being asked to take a breathalyzer test. There's a few facts that you need to know before you take one, because there are a lot of rumors out there about how to "beat" one that could actually cause you problems. This is what you should know.
1. Mouthwash and cough drops will not help you beat the breathalyzer.
In fact, depending on the brand of either, you could make your situation worse. Some mouthwashes and cough drops contain a form of alcohol in them that could temporarily cause the breathalyzer to come back with higher-than-natural numbers.
2. You can't use Axe body spray to beat the breathalyzer either.
This is one of the more recent rumors to start, and it comes from a single traffic stop in South Carolina where a man was observed trying to cover up the odor of alcohol on his breath (and apparently everywhere else) by spraying the body spray directly into his mouth. It doesn't work. However, the internet ran rife with rumors for a while that it was a possibility.
The scent of alcohol doesn't really come from your mouth—it comes from the air your lungs produce because it's deep inside your body. Spraying your mouth with Axe or any other body spray won't change that factor.
3. The use of copper pennies, cigarettes, and holding your breath are also just popular fictions.
There's a fairly pervasive myth that if you suck on a copper penny that it will somehow interrupt the ability of the machine to read the electrical current of your breath sample, which is how the breathalyzer works—giving out an approximate value of your blood alcohol content (BAC).
It is true that cigarettes can interfere with the readings of some of the lower-quality machines, but those are generally not the ones that the police are using. Those are usually the type of machines that people buy to keep for personal use so that their guests can "blow before they go" and test themselves.
Holding your breath is downright foolish—that's been shown actually increase the BAC reading of breathalyzers by up to 20%. Conversely, if you decide to purposefully hyperventilate (which can decrease your BAC reading by as much as 10%), the police are going to do one of two things: wait until you catch your breath and have time to recover and then administer the test anyhow, or mark your actions down as a deliberate refusal to comply with testing.
4. You can get arrested even if you pass the breathalyzer test anyhow.
Here's the real fact that most people don't realize: you don't have to fail the breathalyzer to get arrested. If you're pulled over for something like a burnt-out taillight and the officer smells alcohol on your breath, a breathalyzer could mean the difference between going home and going to the station house. If you're pulled over for driving erratically, weaving, sliding through lights or taking turns a little loosely, those are all good reasons for an officer to consider you "impaired" if you admit to having a drink or two, even if you're under the statutory legal limit.
Ultimately, if you're asked to take a breathalyzer test for whatever reason, you can decide to refuse (in which case implied consent laws kick in and start to punish you even if you aren't intoxicated) or you can go ahead and blow and hope that you're below the limit and the officer doesn't have any other probable cause to arrest you. If there is probable cause to arrest you (like weaving over the yellow line) you're probably getting charged anyhow. Your best course of action is to stop talking and contact a criminal defense lawyer as soon as possible and let him or her challenge the test in court.
