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Can We Depend on Drunk Driving Breath Tests?
There's been an ongoing debate between drunk driving defense lawyers and law enforcement in regards to drunk driving breath tests. The argument is that we can't depend on breathalyzer tests because these instruments often detect other chemicals in the body and mistake them for ethanol, or ethyl alcohol, a compound found in alcoholic beverages. An individual could register as having a high blood alcohol level (B.A.C.) but in actuality there is very little if any ethanol in his body.
The most common breath tests used today by law enforcement are infrared breath analyzing machines. They are not as accurate or dependable as blood tests, but have been accepted as standard instruments to find out if someone is drunk. |
The issue is that these machines are not designed to detect the molecule of ethyl alcohol. Most breathalyzer tests can only find a presence of a part of that molecule. The breathalyzer test assumes that the methyl group is part of an ethyl alcohol compound. Think about the different compounds that are found on someone's breath. Isn't it possible that the breathalyzer instrument could mistake a combination of these compounds as ethyl alcohol?
What's really interesting is that approximately 70 to 80 percent of compounds found on a person's breath contain methyl groups. In order for someone to be convicted for a DUI, the prosecution must show beyond a reason of a doubt that ethyl alcohol was in the body at the time of the breath test. The prosecution must provide proof that the ethyl alcohol is responsible for the results produced by the breath analyzing instrument.
Current scientific research published has shown that results from breath alcohol analysis are not enough to be used in our courts. Furthermore, there have been quite of few studies done to prove that breath tests are not as reliable as blood tests. In one study, members of the toxicology section of the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene found that only 33 percent of the breath test results correlated with corresponding blood tests. What is really interesting and noteworthy about this study is that in 11 of the cases, the defendant was shown to be intoxicated using one of the tests but not intoxicated when using the other.
Perhaps the question we should be asking ourselves is: Who really stands to gain from these breath analyzing machines? Is is the manufacturers who sell these machines to the government? How do we know that these manufacturers are creating perfect machines? After all, man is imperfect, so who's to say that these breath analyzing machines are perfect? These devices are run by computers and we all know that computers can often break down or have technical issues. Law enforcement says that we should put our faith in these machines to provide accurate results, so should we?
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