Can Weather Affect DUI Test Results in Georgia?
Answer:
Yes, absolutely. Standardized field sobriety tests can be significantly affected by rain, sleet, snow, slick surfaces, and wind. If wind is throwing off your balance during a balance test, or rain is affecting your eyes during an eye-tracking test, those conditions need to be raised by your attorney when challenging the results. We review every field sobriety test performed in a case, looking for errors — including weather-related issues.
How Weather Undermines the Balance Tests
The walk-and-turn and one-leg stand tests are both, at their core, tests of physical balance and coordination. Rain makes surfaces slippery and hits a driver in the face while they’re trying to concentrate. Cold temperatures stiffen muscles and can cause shivering that an officer may misread as unsteady coordination. Wind can throw off balance directly during the one-leg stand, where a driver is expected to hold a raised foot steady for 30 seconds without support. None of these effects have anything to do with impairment — they’re simply what happens to a human body standing outside in bad weather.
How Weather Undermines the Eye Test
The Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus test, where an officer watches a driver’s eyes track a moving object, is just as vulnerable to weather as the balance tests, if not more so. Wind can cause the eyes to water, trigger squinting, or force repeated blinking — all of which interfere with the smooth eye-tracking the test depends on. Wind-blown dust, pollen, or debris can irritate the eyes and produce the same kind of involuntary eye movement an officer is trained to associate with impairment. Rain during the test creates similar problems, and testing conditions at night — often with headlights, passing traffic, or strobing patrol lights in the background — can add another layer of visual interference on top of the weather itself.
What NHTSA’s Own Standards Say
The tests were developed and validated under specific conditions, and officers are trained on the assumption that testing happens under reasonably normal circumstances. When rain, wind, extreme cold, or poor visibility are present at the time of testing, that’s a meaningful deviation from the conditions the test results are supposed to reflect — and it’s something a defense attorney can point to directly when challenging how much weight the results should be given.
What This Means for Your Case
If your field sobriety tests were conducted in bad weather — rain, wind, snow, or otherwise — that’s worth a close look. We review every field sobriety test in every case we take on, checking for weather-related and other procedural issues that could weaken the reliability of the results. If this applies to your situation, give us a call.
