Life in a college town can be adventurous and fun. If you’re a student at Penn State, life is likely also very challenging at times, especially regarding trying to keep up with your studies and make the grade. It’s understandable that you try to fit rest and relaxation in with your academics and that you enjoy spending your free time socializing with your friends.
If your social time includes driving in or around Penn State campus, you definitely want to make sure you understand and adhere to all state traffic regulations. It’s also useful to know what types of issues may prompt a police officer to pull you over. In fact, there are several things that will likely place you under immediate suspicion of drunk driving. If you want to avoid legal trouble, you’ll also want to avoid these driving behaviors.
Signs of reasonable suspicion
Police in Penn State (or anywhere) are not free to make traffic stops on a whim. They must first have reasonable cause to pull you over. The following list includes various issues that may constitute reasonable suspicion, giving an officer grounds to stop you:
- The officer may claim to have witnessed your tires veering across the yellow line.
- If you come too close to a curb or parked vehicle on the side of a road, you may wind up subject to a suspected DUI investigation.
- If you apply your brakes at times that are not consistent with current traffic patterns, a nearby police officer who sees your brake lights may decide to pull you over and ask a few questions.
- When police see cars stopped in the middle of the road for no apparent reason, they must suspect those behind the wheel of driving while intoxicated.
- Any erratic driving maneuver makes you a target for a DUI stop.
Let’s say you’re driving along and you see a spider on your leg, so you hit your brakes and try to brush it off. You miss on the first attempt, so you do it again. The next you know, there are blue lights flashing in your rear-view mirror.
You pull over and a police officer asks you to step out of your vehicle. If you happened to have had a beer or two earlier, things may get a whole lot worse before they get better, especially if the officer takes you into custody for suspected drunk driving. If this happens, try to remain calm and seek support from those who can help you protect your rights.
