(Herald DB)
A Daegu court docket mentioned Thursday it has cleared a 60-year-old man of drunk driving expenses, ruling that his consumption of alcohol after stopping his automotive made it unimaginable to find out if he had been intoxicated whereas driving.
The person was initially suspected of driving 2.4 kilometers in Daegu with a blood alcohol content material of 0.128 p.c. He was stopped by police within the metropolis’s Jung-gu district on Sept. 16 at 11:38 p.m. and his BAC was estimated by police 40 minutes later. The person was charged with violating Article 44 of the Street Visitors Act.
Drivers in South Korea whose BAC is 0.03 p.c or increased could be punished for drunk driving, and people with a BAC of 0.07 p.c or increased can have their license revoked.
Nevertheless, the case was difficult by the truth that the defendant consumed a whole bottle of soju inside his automotive between the time he was pulled over and when he stepped out of the automotive 39 seconds later. Witnesses reported that he parked erratically and seemed to be staggering as quickly as he exited his automotive.
“Even when the defendant did drink your entire bottle of soju as he claimed, it’s unclear why he would seem intoxicated instantly afterward,” the court docket identified in its verdict. “However we can not definitively verify that he was drunk whereas driving primarily based on such circumstantial proof or hypothesis.”
To estimate the person’s BAC on the time he was driving, officers used the Widmark formulation, which accounts for the passage of time to find out prior alcohol ranges. However the court docket dominated there was inadequate concrete proof to conclusively say that he was intoxicated behind the wheel.
South Korean cops use numerous means to find out an individual’s drunk driving when a right away BAC take a look at isn’t possible. This consists of the Widmark formulation or having the suspect drink the identical quantity of alcohol afterward to match their intoxication degree.
However some drivers have tried to confuse these outcomes by instantly consuming massive quantities of alcohol when they’re pulled over.
