Austin DWI - Refusing a Breath Test

Forget about the 180 day suspension of your license for refusing a breath test. In the ever-increasing penalties for DWI, it's time to add a new one for refusing a breath test: a forced draw of your blood.

The Austin Police Department, along with a number of other metropolitan areas, has started no refusal weekends on major holiday weekends, the most recent being over New Year's. Exercise your right to refuse a blood test? Fine. They'll get a warrant and draw your blood.

Here's why we might want to consider being offended by this practice:

Drawing blood against a person's will is a major invasion - not just of privacy, but of our basic bodily integrity. Normally, there would have to be some compelling government interest to justify an invasion of that magnitude.

And . . . The Legislature (gasp!) apparently thought so too. In fact, they went to the trouble of listing the situations where an officer can take a specimen without consent. And they're pretty serious ones: where someone has died or will die, or where there has been serious bodily injury. They didn't authorize it in your ordinary misdemeanor DWI arrest. And that makes sense. Situations where someone has been seriously hurt justify a procedure that invasive. Your ordinary misdemeanor DWI arrests do not.

Yes, we want to stop the harm caused by drunk driving. But where is the line? How many times have we been told that we need to give up rights in the name of safety? Are we really willing to live in a police state in exchange for a questionable sense of security? For those out there who say yes, or who think this is ok because it only happens to "criminals," consider this: the next person to get pulled over just may be you.