Your BAC, or your blood alcohol concentration, is just a measurement of the amount of alcohol in your system. Once it enters your bloodstream, it can lead to impairment and intoxication. Police officers can check your BAC with a breath test during a drunk driving arrest, and they can sometimes use other tests – such as a blood test or a urine test.
For the majority of drivers, the legal limit in Texas is 0.08%. Some drivers do have a lower limit, such as underage drivers, who should not have any alcohol in their system.
But if you’re over 21 and you’re not a commercial driver, you may simply be focused on keeping your BAC under 0.08%. If you’ve been drinking, how fast is it going to go down?
A slow decline
It’s important to understand that your BAC will not drop quickly. For most people, the rate of decline is roughly 0.015% per hour. To put this in perspective, if you had a BAC of 0.06% – not yet even over the legal limit – it would still take four hours to get back to 0.00%.
This often leads to people being arrested for drunk driving when they think that they waited long enough to drive safely. In some cases, people can even get pulled over the next day. Someone who stayed out late drinking with friends and had a very high BAC may still fail a breath test the following morning.
What are your options?
A DUI can lead to serious ramifications, including fines, jail time and a license suspension. It’s important that you understand all of the legal defense options you have after an arrest.