No, the attorneys I've talked to or seen discuss this directly cover that, and I'm afraid the mistake here is yours. What you've pointed out is that of course t

No, the attorneys I've talked to or seen discuss this directly cover that, and I'm afraid the mistake here is yours. What you've pointed out is that of course the odds of any random person ending in trouble are low. However, we're talking about a situation where (1) the police have already taken notice of you, personally, which significantly shifts the risk up and (2) the potential outcomes are wildly different. So you must weight even a smaller risk. On the one side, someone who, on their own, "convinces the cops of their innocence" gets to just go home a few hours earlier and possibly save a bit of money. But the person who fails faces enormous negative consequences, huge amounts of money, prison time, a felony conviction will have permanent consequences for the rest of their life, etc. Furthermore, they are at a radical information disadvantage. They not merely face huge risks, they don't even have any real way to know what those risks are in their specific case, and on top of that they're unlikely to be in a good mental state to dispassionately consider even what little they do know! Consider an exact equivalent of what you just said: "A person who didn't wear a seatbelt and succeeded in making it to their destination safely would not have a need for a doctor" so therefore doctors saying they've had hundreds/thousands of cases where they wished their patient had worn a seatbelt is confirmation bias. But on the one hand is a certain amount of extra inconvenience and some money that has to be spent (in mandating it by law we're forcing people to spend it, but that was a debate), whereas on the other is horrific injuries and possibly death. Even if the latter risk is small, because the outcome is so significant it's worth weighting higher. And drivers are often at the highest risk when they're sleepy, or distracted or otherwise mentally disturbed which in turn is the exact worst time to be making judgements. So it's best to just have it be habit to do without thought, each and every time (and a requirement on top to help form that habit). Similarly the you, and me, and everyone else in this thread sitting comfortably on a Sunday afternoon discussing on HN are mostly not going to be in the same mindset we would be after having been taken in for questioning. You cannot count on yourself. You will be facing unknown unknowns. And the risks of screwing up are huge. Your opponents are experienced, and have vast resources they will draw on unhesitatingly. That's why the advice is always simple: just do not try to outthink this, unless perhaps you know for sure you're willing to have your reputation destroyed and go to prison for it (and few actually have any real inkling what that is like or means) and it seems to be a genuine emergency (because otherwise it will not hurt to give it a day).