We were really surprised that we beat the breathalyzer. We wrote a blog post about it. We were even more surprised about the popularity of the blog post. It seems that there are a lot of people interested in beating the breathalyzer. Still more surprising to us is that we found another way of beating the breathalyzer, in the sense of having the breathalyzer generate lower readings than might otherwise be the case.
A little background is necessary. In October 2012 we solicited suggestions from people on how to beat the breathalyzer. We know it’s really easy to have the breathalyzer provide an inaccurately high reading, but we wondered if there was a way to make it read low. At the time we had planned an office party where we all sat around drinking and then would test the theories. Of course, we first take control tests and then try out the theories.
One thing about blowing into breathalyzers in the office is that it’s not like being at the roadside. None of us are nervous, tense or short of breath in a friendly office environment. It’s not raining or snowing, there isn’t a zealous cop yelling at you and all of the devices are at the same internal temperature. So in a sense it’s a much more controlled environment. In another sense it highlights the room for variance in the results at the roadside.
In the previous blog post we mentioned a study that looked at whether roadside breathalyzers provided readings that corresponded with blood tests. One of the points that the authors made is that the readings in the lab environment don’t mirror the readings in the field. Apparently this is one of the reasons that they conclude that roadside screeners are fine for screening; nevertheless, screeners are unsafe to use for punishment.
This brings us to our most recent set of experiments into beating the breathalyzer. We concluded just looking at the devices that they will likely detect alcohol if there is alcohol in your blood and you blow into the device. It’s as simple as that. The question is will it be an accurate representation of the actual alcohol content of your blood? That’s a much more difficult question.
Remember that breathalyzers of any sort don’t measure the alcohol in your blood. They measure the alcohol in your breath.
What do breathalyzers measure?
Remember that breathalyzers of any sort don’t measure the alcohol in your blood. They measure the alcohol in your breath. How can they say that the alcohol in your breath equals in some proportion the alcohol from your blood? They can’t. And this is a big problem.
To sell breathalyzers the companies that make them must persuade the buyers (the police) that they’re going to provide evidence that stands up in court. IRP cases aren’t resolved in court, but criminal DUIs are. The goal when they design and make breathalyzers is to get police departments to buy them. They have salespeople who go to police trade shows and flog breathalyzers to starry eyed cops who get excited about new toys. And they tell the cops that their model of breathalyzer is so accurate and precise that nobody will ever beat a DUI or Over .08 charge.
All breathalyzers are designed to be sold to the police. Keep that in mind.
The next thing to keep in mind is that all people are different. We’re taught this in school and it’s true. There is no such thing as a normal human because all of us have aspects of our physical condition that is not like the “typical” human. The people who do MRI and CT scans will tell you that it’s surprising how often they find someone with some unexpected congenital issue that neither they nor their doctor would have otherwise diagnosed.
And it doesn’t need to be congenital. One of our former clients had childhood polio. Nobody considered that it could interfere with his ability to provide a breath sample, until we tested him in our office and put it all together.
Are you average enough to be guilty?
There is no such thing as a typical human. There are, however, averages.
This is important. Breathalyzers are designed to assume an average person with some benefit of the doubt built into the formula. The average person is expected to have the same amount of alcohol in 2.1 litres of breath as you would find in 1 cubic centimeter of blood. So if you were to blow out just over the amount of breath to fill a 2 litre milk carton, if you’re average, then the amount of alcohol in that milk carton should be the same as the alcohol in 1 cubic centimeter of your blood.
What if you’re not average? To address this and to misdirect people from the question, the manufacturers of breathalyzers say that their machines are designed to read low. That sounds fine and dandy. But we ask again, what if you’re not average? What if you have a breath-blood ratio of 1.9 L to 1 cc of blood?
Bad luck for you.
It turns out that nobody seems to report how many outliers there are. How many people are not average? Some studies have reported subjects having had a ratio of 1.7 L to 1 cc of blood. On an ASD 1.9 or 1.7 could be the difference between pass or fail. Not to mention the incalculable other variables that come from testing outside of a controlled environment.
Interestingly, some of the recent DUI science shows without a doubt that the blood-breath ratio changes over time. In other words, it might be different when you’re at the bar than when you’re at the roadside, or back in the cop shop. It might be different when you’re 21 years old to that of a 54-year-old.
Who did they test to determine what’s average?
Almost all of the testing to determine the breath-blood alcohol ratio are based on samples from mostly Caucasian males. The recent studies, i.e. in the last two decades were mostly done in Northern Europe where the population is overwhelmingly white. The “Over .08” standard was developed testing mid-west American drivers in the 1950s and 60s. Subjects were healthy enough to both provide breath samples and give blood. So healthy white males are what was used to determine an average.
How similar are these subjects to some of the small women of Southeast Asian ethnic origin who drive in British Columbia? We live in a multicultural society. The Canadian population does not resemble the population of Finland or Germany.
Do breathalyzer manufacturers publish their own internal studies? Of course not. Who are their testing subjects? Their employees and engineers in places like Missouri where the population is 83.7% white.
Breathalyzers are tested. The subjects who blow into the devices to test them are cops and people who work for the companies who make the devices. How many cops suffer from shortness of breath? None who are testing breathalyzers – we can say that with near certainty.
All of this is interesting and can be useful for us as the Number 1 IRP DUI lawyers in British Columbia – Yeah!
That was gratuitous – sorry. The point we wish to make is that there are variables not generally considered that factor into how accurate the breathalyzer reading is in estimating your blood-alcohol level. We know that holding your breath due to nervousness can falsely elevate the readings. Still, one of the biggest wildcards is temperature.
Temperature is critical
We’re freaked out about temperature. Temperature of the breathalyzer and ambient air temperature are really crucial factors in breath testing. There is a reason ASD breathalyzers display the temperature – a temperature anomaly can indicate a malfunction. If the temperature outside is 11C and the device reads 39C, more likely than not it is malfunctioning.
This is the reason we put our effort into the Buhr case. Temperature is a major factor. Few police officers seem to understand how significant of a factor temperature is to reasonably reliable breath testing. For example, the Delta police thought that the appropriate course of action if their ASD breathalyzer gave a low temperature reading was to try and heat it with a hair dryer! We’re serious.
Now let’s talk about the tests.
The other way of beating the breathalyzer:
We explained in our blog post “We beat the breathalyzer” that hyperventilating before blowing can reduce the reported blood-alcohol concentration. Our results were averaging a .014 reduction in the reading. Studies conducted in Sweden and Northern Europe correspond with our findings and put the number averaging at an 11% reduction if the subject hyperventilates for 20 seconds before blowing. We later explained the more significant problem that shallow breathing and holding your breath, as people do when they’re nervous, increases the breath-alcohol content by as much as 15% in our tests and 12% in published studies that worked out an average.
(Do you think that the averages used to come to the 2100:1 ratio were based on people tested while nervous? Of course not. It is based mostly on volunteer test subjects.)
Thinking about temperature and testing, and the fact that it’s cold out we decided to perform another study, this time with the new-to-BC breathalyzer, the Alco-Sensor FST. We were really surprised by the results. In certain circumstances the readings were 20% lower (or 20% higher) without mouth-alcohol playing a role as far as we can tell. As we suspected, temperature is a bigger factor than you might suspect or the police will ever admit. In fact, I doubt they know about this other way of beating the breathalyzer, because they really don’t do much in the way of testing and results from scientific testing conducted by the RCMP that call into question the Immediate Roadside Prohibition law would be suppressed anyway.
How did we obtain these results? We’ll explain it in the next blog post. We don’t want to be attacked for suggesting methods for people to get away with driving drunk on New Years Eve. It’s not our intention in any event — we’re interested in science and fairness. We’ll explain it all in Beating the breathalyzer – Part 2.