Drink Drive Testers – Unreliable | The Best Car Finance Blog In The World

Drink Drive Testers – Unreliable

Thursday, 11. December 2008

As we approach Christmas new warnings have been issued about drink driving but this time about the use of cheap testing devices that you can buy on the Internet. Tests carried out by Parker’s Guide with the help of West Yorkshire Police and Medacx, a supplier of testing equipment to police forces in the UK, have found many of these cheap do-it-yourself testers to be unreliable and in some cases dangerously inaccurate. The devices checked ranged from £2.49 to £15.99 and were freely available on the Internet. The devices were tested on a driver after he had drunk over the legal drive limit of 35 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. Every device gave a different reading to the official police device and more than half showed that it was safe for the driver to drive. The majority of devices showed no manufacturer’s name and were imported from either China or Hong Kong. Inspector Russell Clark said that anyone convicted of drunk driving would lose their licence for a minimum of six months and if they killed someone could face a sentence of up to 14 years in prison. Hand held breathalysers are no defence if you should go to court and as we should all know there is no safe level for drink driving, aside from not driving at all. Breathalysers have to undergo rigorous tests before being granted type approval which means they can be used by police forces. None of the cameras tested had type approval. However, a UK seller of a respected self-test alcohol tester, Alcosense, has said that their unit is triple tested for accuracy and has called for regulation of breathalysers in the UK. Hunter Abbott, MD of Alcosense said ‘ At the moment there’s a free for all and there’s no test for accuracy or consistency, which means anyone can sell a device and it doesn’t have to be accurate’. For more information see www.parkers.co.uk By Graham Hill