Learn about what happens when you get in an accident or injure someone and you're charged with drunk driving.

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I'm going to talk a little bit about DUIs that involve accidents and injuries. In California, if you've never been in trouble before, you don't even have any kind of criminal conviction or anything, and a lot of times you've never even had a ticket, a DUI that results in an accident with injuries can be charged as a strike depending on the extent of the injuries. When I say strike, it's like you think. It's very serious, and you could go to prison. For somebody on a first time offense, not a good thing. DUIs with injuries are typically charged under vehicle code section 23153. Again, it can involve alcohol, it can involve drugs. One thing that I always look at when we're talking injury DUI, who caused the accident because a lot of jurisdictions, law enforcement jurisdictions automatically assume that the individual that was drinking was the cause of the accident.

A great way to look at it is let's say you were drinking, and you're at a stoplight. You're not breaking any laws, and somebody runs into the back of your car. Maybe your blood alcohol was .08 or higher. Did you cause that accident, and the person that slammed into you from behind cause themselves injury? That's a critical point. In issues where someone is charged with a DUI with injury, it's very important that documentation and evidence be preserved as quick as possible. For example, getting an accident reconstructionist to take pictures of all the vehicles involved, maybe go out to the location before it rains, skid marks disappear, debris disappears and also to download information from the vehicles because cars nowadays, they're like computers. They got an access port where you can download information. Preservation of all that information is very important. I get calls from people months down the line, and a lot of times that information is gone.

If you've been involved in a DUI with injuries, you got to get yourself a lawyer that understands what needs to be done to preserve the evidence, so that they can really defend you and try to get something that's not an accident injury DUI, not a strike and perhaps even a dismissal or a standard DUI because you don't want to go to prison.

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