Gail Alexan­der

Watch the Christ­mas drink­ing and dri­ving. Af­ter 16 years, the long-await­ed breathal­yser al­co­hol test­ing de­vice comes in­to force from month-end via po­lice op­er­a­tions around well-known lim­ing spots and bars ini­tial­ly, Works Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said yes­ter­day. And by mid-2010, breathal­yser test­ing would be ex­pand­ed to all parts of T&T, Im­bert al­so said.

Im­bert's an­nounce­ment of the de­vice was made at yes­ter­day's week­ly me­dia brief­ing, held this week at the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fice at St Clair Boule­vard in­stead of the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre. An­nounce­ment of the breathal­yser came a day af­ter the Ar­rive Alive group, in a full page dai­ly news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment, called on Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment the de­vice. The ap­peal by Arive Alive was the lat­est of many over the years for the tool, span­ning sev­er­al decades and as many ad­min­is­tra­tions.

Yes­ter­day, Im­bert said the breathal­yser law, with­in the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Traf­fic or­di­nance, which was passed in mid 2007 would be pro­claimed on Mon­day af­ter a two year pe­ri­od in which Gov­ern­ment ex­am­ined types of breathal­y­sers for use in T&T. Im­bert said Cab­i­net yes­ter­day ap­proved or­ders for two types of de­vices to be used in breath tests. Breathal­yser test­ing would be­gin short­ly af­ter procla­ma­tion of the law to­wards month-end. Un­der the 2007 law, po­lice were per­mit­ted to stop mo­torists who were sus­pect­ed to ex­ceed­ing the al­co­hol lev­el in or­der to do breathal­yser tests. Im­bert said, "I'm pleased to an­nounce that af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of typ­i­cal breath test­ing de­vices in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries es­pe­cial­ly the US, we have iden­ti­fied suit­able de­vices to used here."

"The min­istry has now ap­proved the de­vices for test­ing. That was one of the rea­sons we took so much time and we're fair­ly con­fi­dent the de­vices that were even­tu­al­ly se­lect­ed have been tried and test­ed and won't be de­feat­ed by clever at­tor­neys try­ing to find loop­holes," he said. De­vices se­lect­ed were based on co-or­di­na­tion with the US Na­tion­al Traf­fic and High­way Safe­ty ad­min­is­tra­tion that pub­lish­es stan­dards for such de­vices. The Gov­ern­ment was con­fi­dent the de­vices elect­ed would not be sub­ject­ed to chal­lenges such as arose with some breathal­y­sers in the US. Im­bert said the de­vices cho­sen were sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly test­ed and up­dat­ed reg­u­lar­ly.

He said some po­lice of­fi­cer had al­ready been trained in use of the de­vices. "By the end of the month for the Christ­mas sea­son, the po­lice will be out in full force do­ing breathal­yser test­ing," Im­bert said. Im­bert said this would take place in well-known lim­ing ar­eas and bars. There are two types of test­ing de­vices, Im­bert said. The first is a hand-held de­vice used by po­lice for field so­bri­ety tests or to give pre­lim­i­nary in­di­ca­tion of blood al­co­hol lev­els. Im­bert said this had lim­it­ed ac­cu­ra­cy and was not used for ev­i­den­tial pur­pos­es. How­ev­er, it was an in­di­ca­tion that a dri­ver may be over the pre­scribed al­co­hol lev­el.

On the ba­sis of this first test, po­lice of­fi­cers can ask the dri­ver to go to a po­lice sta­tion to do a more de­tailed test. Find­ings of this sec­ond test would be used in court pro­ceed­ings. De­vices so far se­lect­ed for the pre­lim­i­nary test were the Li­on Al­come­ter, the Al­cosen­sor FST, Breathal­yser Dra­go Al­cotest and the Al­coblew. For the for­mal test for quan­ti­ta­tive mea­sure­ment of the pro­por­tion of al­co­hol in a per­son's breath, de­vices to be used in­clud­ed the RBT4, the FC20 and the In­tox­il­yser 400. Im­bert said the al­co­hol lim­it thresh­old was be­tween .07 per cent/08 per cent Im­bert al­so equip­ment would be pro­cured by ten­der­ing process­es and may have some lo­cal sup­pli­ers. Im­bert al­so said the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed im­prov­ing seat belt and oth­er laws in­clud­ing use of in­fant seat belts in a planned pack­age of amend­ments.