Diabetes and Georgia DUI Arrests

A police officer pulls over a late night driver for speeding or weaving. The officer notes several signs of impairment like unsteadiness, staggered walk, slurred speech, disorientation, drowsiness, and confusion, which signal a possible DUI. A DUI arrest is made by the officer and after the officer reads Georgia’s Implied Consent rights, the Driver submits to a state administered breath test at the jail. The test registers that the driver’s BAC is over Georgia’s legal limit for DUI of 0.08 grams or more within three hours of driving.

Was the driver actually DUI? Or, does this particular driver have diabetes?

Diabetes is a classification of metabolic diseases where the body has high blood sugar because it either does not produce enough insulin, or because the body’s cells do not respond to the insulin that it does produce. The symptoms of a diabetic with low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) or high blood sugar (hyperglycemia) are the same as those of a drunk driver. Because the symptoms are the same, if an officer confuses a diabetic episode for alcohol intoxication, It can lead to the arrest of innocent people. Some traffic situations have even lead to the diabetic dying at the hands of police because they fail to receive timely medical care.

Diabetes rates in North America have been steadily increasing over the past 20 years. Near 26 million people in the US had been diagnosed with diabetes in 2010. Another 7 million people have undiagnosed diabetes. It is now estimated that 57 million people have pre-diabetes. Since the population of the United States is currently estimated at 311 million people, that means that 27% of the population is diabetic or pre-diabetic. The Centers for Disease Control has termed diabetes an epidemic. About 5–10% of diabetes cases in North America are type 1, while the rest are type 2. In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that 1 in 3 Americans born after 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetime. The American Diabetes Association approximates that 18.3% (8.6 million) of Americans aged 60 and older have diabetes. Unfortunately, for persons suspected of DUI, police do not receive very adequate medical training, if any, on how to distinguish a DUI driver from a Diabetic Emergency. The only sure method of detection is a blood test at the hospital which is often too time consuming for police officers that can use other legally accepted DUI detection methods, such as DUI breath tests. Even DUI blood tests do not routinely screen for indicators of diabetes.

A suspected DUI driver with low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) may experience dizziness, slurred speech, blurred vision, muscle weakness, loss of coordination, and confusion. With high blood sugar (hyperglycemia), the driver can suffer from blurred vision, fatigue (sleepiness), dry mouth (with effects on speech), hyperventilation, cardiac arrhythmia, and stupor. Without adequate medical attention, these conditions can result in coma or death. In a roadside DUI investigation, the physical manifestations of a diabetic in distress are the very DUI detection clues that police officers are trained to look for under the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) DUI Detection and Standardized Field Sobriety Training to make a “less safe” DUI arrest.