You may have seen the pictures released earlier this week of Huntington Beach covered in a white blanket of hail. Weather like that is nearly unheard of out here in sunny California. So we really don’t get some of the same stories you might hear in, say, New Jersey. In one such story, two men tried to use the icy conditions to cover up a DUI accident. Brian Byers, 24, from Sparta, New Jersey, allegedly ran a stop sign and hit a guardrail with his black 2001 BMW. It is alleged that, following the collision, Byers drove the BMW to his house, then back to the scene with 20 year old Alexander Zambenedetti, a friend of Byers’. When they arrived, the two of them dumped 5-gallon buckets of water onto the road near the collision to create black ice. The plan, according to investigators, was to create the black ice so that Byers could claim that it caused the accident, not Byer’s drunk driving.Unfortunately for the duo, an officer spotted Byers walking toward an idling car in the middle of the road. Zambendetti was found in the driver’s seat without a shirt even though the temperature was one degree. He told the officer that he had taken his shirt off because it had gotten wet when he fell.The officer also noticed two 5-gallon buckets in the car with water still in them. Byers confessed the plan to officers. Skid marks were also apparently visible through the thin layer of ice. Byers was arrested and charged with driving under the influence, careless driving, failure to stop at a stop sign, leaving the scene of an accident, failure to report an accident, and disorderly conduct. Byers was charged with disorderly conduct because the ice was so bad that the Department of Public Works had to dump a half ton of salt on the street to make it safe. Zambenedetti was also arrested charged with driving under the influence after he failed several field sobriety tests. He was also charged careless driving and failure to wear a seatbelt. They were clever enough to concoct this creative scheme, even though it didn’t work, but not smart enough to realize that they shouldn’t have been drinking and driving in the first place.
Continue Reading...
Showing posts with label Black. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Black. Show all posts
March 26, 2015
August 12, 2012
Erratic Driving?….or “Black and White Fever”?
Undoubtedly the most common observation of impaired driving that officers make — and the one most commonly used to justify stopping the driver — is that the suspect was "weaving within the traffic lane", sometimes combined with "erratic driving". At the same time, experienced traffic patrol officers are familiar with a phenomenon which is sometimes referred to as "black-and-white fever".
That phenomenon is simply the normal reaction of most drivers to being followed by a marked police car (painted black and white in many jurisdictions). As soon as the motorist becomes aware that a police car is following him, he becomes understandably apprehensive and focuses his attention increasingly on the rear view mirror. As the officer continues to follow, the driver becomes tense, worried, and his concentration on driving is broken: He keeps his eyes more on the mirror and less on the road ahead. Each time the driver brings his eyes back to the road, he finds that he has drifted and must correct the course of the car back to the center of the lane.
The result: weaving and, possibly, erratic movements such as sudden increases or decreases in speed (tension can cause the foot to depress the accelerator). And, of course, these are the most commonly encountered symptoms of a drunk driver on the highway.
In other words, it is the very presence of the officer which tends to create the probable cause for suspecting a DUI. And after the officer pulls the driver over, he gets out and approaches the car with the very human preconception that the driver is probably intoxicated. And, as we know from psychological studies, we all tend to see what we expect to see: normally veined eyes appear "bloodshot"?, normal but nervous speech sounds "slurred"?, normal pink complexion appears "flushed"?, etc.
These observations are quickly followed by the notoriously subjective and inaccurate field sobriety tests, difficult to perform under the best of conditions (see my earlier post, “Field Sobriety Tests: Designed for Failure?”)….followed predictably by an arrest for drunk driving.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)