Drinking alcohol is a social custom that has been around since the early days of man. However the difference with today’s alcoholic drinking by comparison to that of say just 200 years ago relates to the scale of damage someone under the influence of alcohol can inflict on their local community when driving behind the wheel of a car. Being drunk and picking a fight is one thing, being drunk and mowing down an innocent pedestrian quite another. So does the alcohol analyzer have a place in today’s drunken driving conscious world?
Drinking while under the influence of alcohol is today recognized in most civilized countries as a serious offence and in some as a criminal act. The reason this attitude has been adopted is fairly easy to appreciate as it relates to the impact that can be sustained on a community by the reckless attitude of someone willing to consume sufficient alcohol to make their ability to drive dangerous to themselves and to anyone they may encounter while they drive.
The commercial introduction of the alcohol breath analyzer is recognition of the concern about drunk driving shared by global communities. The alcohol breath analyzer is a mechanism that provides people a way in which they can measure their alcohol intake in order to assess their ability to drive. Whether a general social survey about alcohol breath analyzers would agree that this is good enough to prevent drunken driving is arguable. Certainly any general social survey about alcohol breath analyzers will recognize that the onus of responsibility in relation to driving remains with the user and if that individual likely to be able to make a proper judgement call after consuming several pints of alcohol? It also seems reasonable to suggest that any equipment can produce a faulty reading which even if a user is conscientious about how much they have drunk could put them at odds with the law.
There may be a case for the alcohol breath analyzer in that it can be used to act as a deterrent, but only in respect of individuals with a responsible attitude towards themselves and the potentially dangerous risk of driving under the influence. An alcohol breath analyzer is never likely to deter those reckless enough to gamble with their and everyone else’s lives.
Because society continues to experience the significant problems caused by drunken driving or driving over the prescribed legal limit the only sure way to defend against this type of abuse is to make a rule that no drinking is permitted if an individual wishes to climb behind the wheel of a car, thereby eliminating the potential risk of driving under the influence of alcohol completely. For this reason the alcohol breath analyzer will always only possess limited use and thereby limited effectiveness. However even limited effectiveness might be sufficient to justify its existence in an area of such public concern.
In the end the only way that the alcohol breath analyzer can be shown to be a successful product is from the number of sales recorded and whether or not production is sustained. If the law makes it even tougher by ruling that even one drink will lead to a driver being disqualified and heavily fined it will deter the majority while leaving a small minority who would be willing to accept the risks.