What happens if I refuse the roadside sobriety tests?

Declining the roadside exercises doesn't suspend your license and isn't the conduct Florida's refusal statute addresses. Those consequences follow a refusal of the breath or urine test, which happens later and under a different rule.

What declining does is subtract evidence. There's no video of you stepping off the line, no officer testimony counting clues. That's frequently the strongest visual evidence a prosecutor has, and without it the case narrows to what one officer says he observed.

The trade-off is that the State can argue the refusal shows consciousness of guilt, and juries do hear that argument. They also hear the answer — that a person with a bad back, standing on a sloped shoulder at midnight with headlights in his eyes, had ordinary reasons to decline.

Officers often keep asking after a refusal. A refusal doesn't have to be repeated or justified.