What are the probable causes for being pulled over for a DUI?

What’s the probable cause or reasonable suspicion to pull someone over for DUI? It really is more common sense: it’s bad driving.

If the police officer sees someone driving badly, it could be caused by any number of things: the person could be looking at their phone, they could have been distracted, or dropped something, or spilled a drink on themselves, or they could be intoxicated. So, in general, the officer will then start following the car and looking to see if the person is, well weaving in the lane would be the most common thing, and if they see a car weaving or sometimes even hitting the curb or going through a stop sign, then they will put on the blue lights and pull the car over.

At that point, when they approach the car they’re looking to see if the person looks like they’ve been drinking, in other words: how do they sound? Do they smell like alcohol? Do they have bloodshot eyes? Can they answer simple questions? Or, are they intoxicated or grossly intoxicated?

That’s the way that most of those cases come about. The exception is sometimes there’s a wreck, and the police officer/highway patrol is called to the wreck, and they don’t see the driving obviously (and many people wreck without being intoxicated), so they would start the process then of trying to evaluating who was the driver and do those same things, those same observations to see if they believe the person is showing signs of intoxication.