Breathalysers: A Case Study

Introduction and Social Relevance 2015 was a tragic year for South Australia. 102 people died on the roads and over 750 serious injuries occurred in South Australia alone. 44 of the fatalities were young men and women who died due to driving over the allowed alcohol consumption limit of 0.05 (Responsibility, 2016). This did not however need to be the case, these fatalities would not have occurred if the drivers were tested and stopped beforehand. Over 600 000 drink driving tests occurred last year which helped save countless other lives as over 7000 people were found to be driving over the limit and were arrested as a result (SAPOL, 2016). However how many of the remaining 593000 people may have also been over the legal limit? Breathalysers …show more content…
Furthermore, the breathalyser instrument can be used on the fly, meaning that the person tested does not have to leave their car. Also, the test duration is not very long and therefore time spent on each driver is short. Other alternatives such as blood tests may be more accurate than breathalysers, but are inconvenient and invasive (DUIBlog, 2015). Breathalyzers can be used as an initial screening method before the blood test. This is because the blood test requires the driver to leave their car to go to the police car to get tested which would be inconvenient for the driver. A small percentage of drivers may suffer from trypanophobia; the fear of needles and therefore, blood tests would not be a suitable option for them. Even though there is a margin of error of about 15%, it can be used by police as a rough estimate to quickly identify if a driver is driving under the influence of alcohol. If the driver reads positive, the police can use an alternate and more accurate method such as a blood test to measure the actual result of the alcohol levels (Richardson, …show more content…
The results would be further affected depending on the time of day as the room temperature is generally lower at night time. Radio frequencies around the area, such as police radios, can also lead to inaccurate results as the electromagnetic waves from police radios can cause breathalysers to malfunction and present readings which are a lot higher than the real blood alcohol level. Overall breathalyzers carry a 15% margin of error, a high percentage which can easily get larger just by factors such as temperature or police radios (DUICentral, 2015). This margin of error is too high for an instrument that is relied upon every day in Australia and is not a worthy instrument to determine whether a person is safe to drive or