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Driving Under the Influence of?Binaca?

By Lawrence Taylor

So you're driving along and suddenly there are flashing red lights in your rear view mirror. You recall that glass of wine with dinner: not nearly enough to be over .08%, of course, but enough to cause an odor of alcohol on the breath. As you pull over, you grab the breath freshener and quickly spray it into your mouth. The officer asks you to step out of the car, holds out a portable breath testing device and asks you to blow into it. A moment later you are being handcuffed. What happened? One of the many problems with breath machines is that they cannot tell the difference between alcohol coming from the lungs and alcohol which is already in the mouth or throat. This problem is referred to as mouth alcohol, and is particularly troublesome because, believing it to be alcohol from the lungs, the breath machines will incorrectly multiply the detected alcohol by 2100 times (see my earlier post, Breathalyzers — and Why They Don't Work)...continue to full post

Full post as published by DUI Blog on January 25, 2011 (boomark / email).