Can You Refuse a Field Sobriety Test? Sorting the Certain From the Uncertain

Whether you can refuse a field sobriety test depends on which request the officer is making, whether you have been arrested, and which state's statute applies. Roadside coordination exercises (horizontal gaze nystagmus, walk-and-turn, and one-leg stand) are investigative tools used to build probable cause; declining them does not, by itself, trigger the implied-consent license suspensions that California, Texas, and Michigan attach to a post-arrest chemical test. A preliminary alcohol screening device sits in a third column: California Vehicle Code 23612(i) requires the officer to advise most drivers of a right to refuse a PAS, while Vehicle Code 13388 requires a PAS of many lawfully detained drivers under 21, and Michigan Compiled Laws 257.625a treats a preliminary breath-test refusal as a civil infraction. After a lawful arrest, the evidentiary breath or blood test is the implied-consent row: one year for a first chemical-test refusal under California Vehicle Code 23612, 180 days under Texas Transportation Code 724.035, and one year under Michigan Compiled Laws 257.625f if no hearing is requested within 14 days after notice. Advice that every sobriety test is voluntary mixes those three columns.

I spend my working life reconciling area tables across bound census editions. When two volumes change county boundaries, I do not add the acreage and call the sum a trend. The internet line that says “refuse the test” does what those volumes forbid: it adds unlike units.

Which request are you answering at the roadside?

A stop for suspected impaired driving usually produces more than one request, and the legal column changes with the wording. The officer may ask you to follow a stimulus with your eyes, walk a line, or stand on one foot. That battery is the standardized field sobriety test set taught from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration materials: horizontal gaze nystagmus, walk-and-turn, and one-leg stand. The officer may then offer a handheld PAS in California or a PBT in Michigan. After a lawful arrest, the request shifts to an evidentiary breath test at a station or a blood test.

Those three asks share a family resemblance and almost none of the same footnotes. I prefer an ugly explanatory note to a clean ranking built from unlike boundaries. Ask which test is being requested. “Field sobriety test” in ordinary speech covers all three. The statute usually does not. Pulling over, producing a license, and stepping out when ordered are not sobriety exercises. Declining a walk-and-turn is a different act from ignoring a command to leave the travel lane.

How roadside field sobriety exercises differ from a chemical test

Roadside exercises are observations. The officer scores clues on balance, instruction-following, and eye movement, then decides whether there is probable cause to arrest. They are not a blood-alcohol number, and they are not the implied-consent chemical test named in California Vehicle Code 23612, Texas Transportation Code Chapter 724, or Michigan Compiled Laws 257.625c through 257.625f. Horizontal gaze nystagmus is an eye-tracking exercise. Walk-and-turn is a heel-to-toe line with a turn. One-leg stand is a timed balance on one foot. Injury, footwear, road slope, and divided attention can all produce clues in a sober person.

The figure people quote comes from a defined sample. In August 1998, NHTSA published Validation of the Standardized Field Sobriety Test Battery at BACs below 0.10 Percent (report DOT HS 808 839), by Jack Stuster and Marcelline Burns of Anacapa Sciences. Seven officers from the San Diego Police Department alcohol enforcement unit administered the three-test battery. The analysis used 297 motorists. Officers’ estimates of whether a motorist’s BAC was above or below 0.08 percent were accurate in 91 percent of those cases, or as high as 94 percent if explanations for some false positives are accepted. The mean measured BAC was 0.122 percent.

The study measured trained officers in one city, in a group whose average BAC sat well above the 0.08 percent adult threshold in the California Driver Handbook. I once transposed an acreage total while moving between columns; I now check the row sum before I trust the heading. The 91 percent figure is a row sum from San Diego in the late 1990s, not a conversion factor for your county. Declining the exercises withholds that scoring. It does not erase the driving, the odor, the speech, or the arrest decision.

Preliminary alcohol screening sits in a different column

A PAS or PBT is a handheld breath device used as an investigative tool before, or apart from, the evidentiary test. California Vehicle Code 23612(h) says a preliminary alcohol screening test “is a field sobriety test and may be used by an officer as a further investigative tool.” Subdivision (i) requires the officer who uses a PAS to advise the person of the request, that a PAS does not satisfy the later blood, breath, or urine test, and of the person’s right to refuse the PAS.

That right is not universal even inside California. Vehicle Code 13388 tells a peace officer who lawfully detains a driver under 21, with reasonable cause to believe a violation of the 0.01 percent rule in Section 23136, to request a PAS if a device is immediately available. Refusal, failure to complete, or a result of 0.01 percent or greater starts a suspension process. The California DMV handbook, Section 9, “Alcohol and Drugs,” states it is illegal to drive with a BAC of 0.01 percent or higher if you are under 21, and that if a PAS shows 0.05 percent or higher, the officer may require a breath or blood test. Those figures are California under-21 rows, not the adult 0.08 percent limit.

Michigan Compiled Laws 257.625a(2)(d) makes a person who refuses a preliminary chemical breath analysis upon a lawful request responsible for a civil infraction, with a separate track for commercial-motor-vehicle operators. That infraction is not the one-year implied-consent suspension MCL 257.625f attaches to the evidentiary chemical test. Texas implied consent, in Transportation Code 724.011 and 724.015, is written around a specimen of breath or blood after arrest, with a warning that refusal will suspend the license for not less than 180 days. The roadside handheld screen is not that specimen. Collapsing the two is the same error as adding 1890 county area to 1900 county area after an annexation.

The post-arrest chemical test is the implied-consent row

Once you are lawfully arrested, the request that carries the license ledger is the evidentiary chemical test: breath at a station or mobile unit, or blood. California Vehicle Code 23612(a)(1)(A) deems a driver to have given consent to blood or breath testing for alcohol if lawfully arrested for an offense under Section 23140, 23152, or 23153. Subdivision (a)(1)(C) makes that testing incidental to a lawful arrest. The California Driver Handbook says that if you refuse a requested blood or urine test, DMV will suspend or revoke driving privilege for one year. The statute is narrower: 23612 ties the duty to a lawful arrest, and 23612(a)(1)(D) requires a warning of a one-year administrative suspension for a first failure to complete the required tests, two years if the refusal falls within ten years of a listed prior, and three years if it falls within ten years of two or more listed priors.

Texas Transportation Code 724.035 directs DPS to suspend for 180 days on a first refusal, or two years with one or more alcohol-related or drug-related enforcement contacts in the prior ten years, effective the 40th day after notice. Michigan Compiled Laws 257.625f(1)(a) suspends for one year if the person refuses the chemical test and does not request a hearing within 14 days after notice under section 625e, or two years for a second or subsequent refusal within seven years.

The California Driver Handbook lists 0.08 percent or higher if you are over 21, 0.01 percent if you are under 21, 0.01 percent at any age on DUI probation, and 0.04 percent for a commercial license or a passenger for hire. Vehicle Code 23152(b) makes 0.08 percent unlawful and creates a rebuttable presumption that the person had 0.08 percent or more at the time of driving if a chemical test within three hours after driving showed that concentration. That three-hour window is California’s chemical-test timing rule for the presumption, not a national deadline. California Code of Regulations, Title 17, section 1221.1(b)(1) adds a collection wait: the breath sample shall be collected only after fifteen continuous minutes during which the subject must not have ingested alcoholic beverages or other fluids, regurgitated, vomited, eaten, or smoked.

In Birchfield v. North Dakota, 579 U.S. 438 (2016), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment permits a warrantless breath test incident to a lawful drunk-driving arrest and does not permit a warrantless blood test on that same search-incident theory. Motorists may not be criminally punished for refusing a blood test on legally implied consent alone. Administrative license suspensions for refusal remain a different column.

| Request | Timing | If declined | Still possible | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | SFST (HGN, walk-and-turn, one-leg stand) | Pre-arrest | No CA/TX/MI chemical-test suspension | Arrest on other evidence | | PAS / PBT | Pre-arrest | CA adults may refuse (VC 23612(i)); many under-21 stops require PAS (VC 13388). MI: civil infraction (MCL 257.625a) | Later evidentiary test | | Evidentiary breath or blood | Post-arrest | CA 1 year (VC 23612); TX 180 days (724.035); MI 1 year (257.625f) | Blood warrant; criminal case |

If you refuse a breathalyzer after a field sobriety test, you have crossed into the chemical-test column only if that breathalyzer is the evidentiary test after arrest, not the handheld PAS. Arrest status and the statutory warning decide the column, not the shape of the device.

Why you cannot import one state's footnote into another

Field sobriety test refusal consequences are jurisdiction work. California’s one-year first-refusal suspension does not apply on a Texas shoulder. Texas’s 180-day first-refusal suspension does not apply in a Michigan booking room.

The administrative-hearing deadlines are short and they are not national. California Vehicle Code 13558(b) says that if you want a hearing before the effective date of the order, the request shall be made within 10 days of receipt of the notice. The California Driver Handbook tells arrested drivers they may request a DMV hearing within 10 days from the date of arrest; Vehicle Code 23612(f) makes the temporary license valid for 30 days from arrest. Texas Transportation Code 724.041(a) requires DPS to receive a hearing request not later than the 15th day after notice. Michigan Compiled Laws 257.625f uses 14 days after the date of notice. Missing the deadline in the state that issued the notice can let the suspension run without a hearing.

Commercial-driver status, age, a prior record, a crash, or an injury can move you into a different row of the same code. This page is not live legal advice. A DUI defense attorney in the county of the stop reads the notice you were handed against the charging statute.

What refusal does not erase

Refusal is not a release mechanism. An officer who has probable cause from driving, appearance, statements, or a completed exercise can arrest without a PAS number and without a station breath result. The stop, the video, and any test you already took remain. The criminal case and the motor-vehicle-agency case can run on separate calendars.

California Vehicle Code 23612(i) says the obligation to submit to the blood, breath, or urine test is not satisfied by a PAS. Michigan Compiled Laws 257.625a(2)(c) says a person who submits to a preliminary chemical breath analysis remains subject to the later chemical-test sections. Refusing both a roadside test and a later breath test does not prevent a warrant for blood after Birchfield.

A short record of the encounter

If you are going to decline something, decline a named request.

1. Identify which test the officer named: a field exercise, a handheld PAS or PBT, or an evidentiary breath or blood test after arrest.
2. Follow lawful directions that are not tests, including stopping and leaving the roadway when ordered.
3. Answer the named request without volunteering a roadside legal theory.
4. As soon as you can do so safely, write the time, location, the test named, the warning you heard, and the answer you gave.
5. If you are handed a suspension notice, calendar the hearing deadline printed on that notice (10 days from receipt or arrest in the California sources above, 15 days after notice in Texas, 14 days after notice in Michigan) and take the paper to a local DUI defense attorney.

I keep a handwritten conversion ledger beside every area comparison because memory rearranges columns.

Local counsel reads the notice you were handed

The certain facts here are the ones printed in a named statute or handbook. The uncertain ones travel well on a search page: that every sobriety test is voluntary, that refusal ends the stop, that one state’s implied-consent rule travels with your plate.

A DUI defense attorney in the jurisdiction of the stop can match arrest status, the exact request, commercial-driver or under-21 status, and the notice in your pocket. I can sort the columns.

Frequently asked questions

What can happen after declining roadside sobriety exercises?

The officer can still arrest you from driving, speech, odor, and other observations. Declining walk-and-turn or one-leg stand does not start the implied-consent suspensions in California Vehicle Code 23612, Texas Transportation Code 724.035, or Michigan Compiled Laws 257.625f. Those attach to the post-arrest chemical test. The stop remains.

Should a sober driver decline a field sobriety test?

A sober driver can produce clues. NHTSA’s 1998 San Diego study (DOT HS 808 839) reported 91 percent accuracy at 0.08 percent BAC among 297 motorists with a mean measured BAC of 0.122 percent. That sample does not decide your stop. Lawful orders that are not tests still apply.

Can a driver decline roadside exercises and request a breath test instead?

You can decline roadside exercises in many stops. You do not set the sequence. California Vehicle Code 23612(i) treats a PAS as a separate screen for most adult drivers and warns that a PAS does not satisfy the later chemical test. After a lawful arrest, implied consent attaches to the evidentiary breath or blood test requested.

What happens after refusing both a roadside test and a breath test?

Refusing exercises does not block arrest. Refusing the post-arrest chemical test can suspend the license: one year in California (Vehicle Code 23612), 180 days in Texas (Transportation Code 724.035), one year in Michigan (MCL 257.625f) if no hearing is timely requested. Officers may still seek a warrant for blood. Calendar the hearing deadline on the notice.

Which states permit refusal of field sobriety exercises?

There is no single national table of field-exercise rules comparable to a census area volume. Implied-consent statutes typically name chemical tests of breath, blood, or urine after arrest, not walk-and-turn. Michigan treats PBT refusal as a civil infraction under MCL 257.625a. Read the statute for the state of the stop.

What test is the officer asking for at this stage of the stop?

Ask which test is being requested: a field exercise, a handheld PAS or PBT, or an evidentiary breath or blood test after arrest. The legal column changes at arrest. California Vehicle Code 23612(h) calls a PAS a field sobriety test used as an investigative tool, separate from the chemical test with California’s one-year first-refusal suspension.