What Are Misconceptions about DWI?
Explained by Our DWI Attorneys
Getting charged with a DWI can be very scary. Most people who are arrested for DWI are people who never have had any contact with the criminal justice system. At one moment, someone is driving home from dinner where their mind is in a totally different place, and then all of a sudden, they are embroiled in this criminal case where they are being arrested, handcuffed, and spending the night in jail.
An automatic reaction is to feel like your life is over. Now, you have just spent the night in jail, you have lost your license, and you’re facing a conviction of DWI. When people come to us, we often have to spend the first half an hour walking them off the ledge, explaining that their life is not over and that many of these issues they are facing are things we can help them with.
We have to explain that many of the potential issues that could arise, such as a license suspension and the forfeiture or seizure of their vehicle, are things that can be prevented.
Most people who get arrested for DWI are not people who went out to get really drunk and then drive. They are usually just people who committed some kind of traffic infraction and then they did not say or do the right thing to try to avoid being arrested when they were pulled over; so they ended up getting sucked into the system.
People’s reactions to getting charged with a DWI run the gamut. Most people think this will never happen to them again, and they are in disbelief that it even happened to them in the first place. A lot of people, if not most, actually learn their lesson and never have another brush with the law.
When someone is arrested for a DWI or any crime in the city of New York, their case is sent into something called the Web-Crims system.
All arrests are public knowledge, so if anybody was actually looking for your record, they would be able to find out everything about it. They would also be able to see when you were due to go back to court, although most people do not actually use the Web-Crims system since people are generally not familiar with it.