Many people understand that they should not drive immediately after drinking. They believe they need to wait for a certain amount of time, letting their BAC fall back below the legal limit. You will sometimes see a person at the bar spend the last half hour drinking a glass of water before they get behind the wheel.
But is a half hour actually long enough? How fast is your blood alcohol concentration going to decline?
It goes down very slowly
The reality is that a half hour will have almost no impact. In an entire hour, your BAC is likely to drop by just 0.015%. In other words, if you had a BAC of 0.10, which is over the legal limit, you would not even be back under that limit after waiting for an entire hour. It would likely take you more than six hours to get your BAC back down to zero.
Additionally, your BAC does not start declining as soon as you stop drinking. When you finish your last drink for the night, your body still has to process the alcohol. Your BAC is climbing. Only after your body finishes metabolizing the alcohol does it start to go down.
In other words, BAC decline faces a significant delay at the beginning, and it is a slow rate of decline even after it starts. This means that many people do not wait long enough and find themselves facing drunk driving charges because their BAC is still elevated over the legal limit.
Your defense options
If you find yourself in this position, you know that a conviction could lead to jail time, fines and the loss of your license. It is important to know exactly what legal defense options you have.