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Fail Your HGN Test? Maybe Not...
Posted by: Michael Holmes
June 27, 2010
Topic: Understanding DUI & DWI
Some of HGN testing’s most vocal opponents site a variety of facts when disputing the reliability of law enforcement’s administration of HGN. Most police officers neither are trained medical practitioners nor are they licensed ophthalmologists. According to the 2003 American Board of Ophthalmology brochure, there are only 23,662 licensed ophthalmologists in the United States.
There are numerous causes of Nystagmus; meaning diagnosis by non-medical personnel is highly problematic. Nystagmus is naturally found in a significant percentage of people and can be indicative of many medical and physiological disorders. Some of the most common causes of Nystagmus include:
(1) problems with the inner ear labyrinth; (2) irrigating the ears with warm or cold water under peculiar weather conditions; (3) influenza; (4) streptococcus infection; (5) vertigo; (6) measles; (7) syphilis; (8) arteriosclerosis; (9) muscular dystrophy; (10) multiple sclerosis; (11) Korchaff's syndrome; (12) brain hemorrhage; (13) epilepsy; (14) hypertension; (15) motion sickness; (16) sunstroke; (17) eye strain; (18) eye muscle fatigue; (19) glaucoma; (20) changes in atmospheric pressure; (21) consumption of excessive amounts of caffeine; (22) excessive exposure to nicotine; (23) aspirin; (24) circadian rhythms; (25) acute trauma to the head; (26) chronic trauma to the head; (27) some prescription drugs, tranquilizers, pain medications, anti-convulsants; (28) barbiturates; (29) disorders of the vestibular apparatus and brain stem; (30) cerebellum dysfunction; (31) heredity; (32) diet; (33) toxins; (34) exposure to solvents PCBS, dry cleaning fumes, carbon monoxide; (34) extreme chilling; (35) eye muscle imbalance; (36) lesions; (37) continuous movement of the visual field past the eyes, i.e., looking from a moving train; (38) antihistamine use. See State v. Witte, supra; State v. Clark, supra; State v. Superior Court, supra; Mark A. Rouleau, Unreliability of the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus Test, 4 Am. Jur. Proof of Facts 3d 439 (1989); Louise J. Gordy & Roscoe N. Gray, 3A Attorney's Textbook of Medicine §§ 84.63 and 84.64 (1990), and other cases and treatises hereinbefore mentioned.
How about for those of us who are colorblind? A colorblind individual will likely have a pathological Nystagmus, therefore invalidating their test results. In the United States, about 7% of the male population – or about 10.5 million men – and 4% percent of the female population either cannot distinguish red from green, or see red and green differently (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 2006).
