In our last blog post we explained some of the important issues with breathalyzer testing and how you can blow an artificially high or potentially lower reading under certain circumstances. If you want to beat the breathalyzer, in the sense of trying to fool the breathalyzer into thinking you have no alcohol in your body, forget it. It won’t work. You can’t keep your lungs from expelling alcohol in your blood. There are ways, however, to provide a lower sample that may even more accurately reflect your actual blood-alcohol content. Beating the breathalyzer by having it provide a lower reading is completely legal and possible.
It’s all about temperature
Thinking about the temperature issue, we decided to do some tests on actual drinking subjects to see in what ways temperature might play a factor in breath testing using the roadside breathalyzers.
As we said, temperature is critical. In almost every BC Police station you will now find an Intox EC/IR II evidentiary breath tester. These are the breathalyzers that are supposed to provide proper readings for the purpose of punishment in criminal cases. In criminal impaired driving investigations the police must take a “Proper Breath Test” which is a phrase of art describing procedure to take reliable breath samples. These breathalyzer tests can only be taken on an Approved Instrument such as the Intox EC/IR II.
We managed to be the first private lawyers to get a hold of a copy of the RCMP manual for the Intox EC/IR II a few years ago. It’s now published online. More lucky is that we were able to purchase a couple of Intox EC/IR machines from police departments in the US where they were already replacing their units with the newest model of Intoxilyzer.
We took our breathalyzers apart. An interesting feature we noticed is that all of the components where the breath travels are heated. So the breath tube, the manifold, the IR chamber and the fuel cell are heated and presumably intended to maintain a constant temperature to ensure reliable breathalyzer tests. That’s because temperature is crucial to obtaining reliable tests.
Our temperature testing:
Thinking about the temperature issue, we decided to do some tests on actual drinking subjects to see in what ways temperature might play a factor in breath testing using the roadside breathalyzers that the police use to issue Immediate Roadside Prohibitions. We formed a hypothesis. We did the tests. We were surprised to see our hypothesis confirmed and that the results were more dramatic than expected.
Our tests subjects all waited 20 minutes after their last drink and then we started the testing procedure. We used the same test subjects and the same Alco-Sensor FST for all the tests. We calibrated it beforehand. It’s a new breathalyzer. We assume that it was accurate, but regardless it serves the purpose because we were simulating an actual scenario – not just a situation in the lab.
Our subjects each took two breaths before blowing. The ASD temperature ranged between 21-24ºC. We performed the tests repeatedly in the initial manner and then in reverse order.
The tests were performed in two locations. Inside a home with an ambient air temperature of approximately 23ºC and outside where the temperature was approximately 5ºC. The purpose was to determine, using a typical breathing pattern, if the ambient air temperature would impact the breathalyzer readings. Four subjects were tested.
The results:
In each case the tests taken outside were more than 20% lower than the tests taken inside. One subject blew a 190 mg reading inside and then blew 160 mg outside. The tests were confirmed in reverse. Another subject blew 54 mg inside and 39 mg outside.
What it means:
We assume that the issue here is one of colder air being expelled from the lungs. If this is the case, are you guiltier in summer?
There is a lot to think about here. Firstly, if your goal is to blow a lower reading, when it’s cold out you can increase the chance of doing that by stepping out of your car and then blowing after being outside for a minute. We didn’t try hyperventilating because we didn’t want anyone to become sick breathing in cold air. We wouldn’t encourage people to do that, but a few deep breaths just before you blow won’t hurt and will increase the chance of a lower breathalyzer reading.
It has been confirmed by the world’s top alcohol toxicologists that breathing patterns, including tapering off your breath early can cause a lower reading. We don’t encourage that because in Canada failing to provide a breath sample is a criminal offence, although a 90-day IRP for refusal is far more likely.
We assume that the issue here is one of colder air being expelled from the lungs. If this is the case, are you guiltier in summer?
What about those tests that we discussed in our last blog post about how they determined who was average and decided upon a blood-breath ratio? Were those tests done inside or outside? Did the machines have heated breath tubes? Were the subjects kept in the same ambient air temperature before blowing?
How reliable are the averages when there is so much variability in the readings? Is it all a bunch of garbage?
It feels that way to us some of the time.
Beating the breathalyzer
So we have confirmed that another way to beat the breathalyzer by increasing the chance of a lower reading is to get out of your vehicle before blowing if it’s cold outside. Some officers have people blow while in their vehicle. Others ask the drivers to step out. Your balance may be overly and inaccurately scrutinized, but rarely is this a consideration in an IRP case.
If the officer asks you to blow while you’re still in your warm vehicle, simply ask to step outside. Take a few deep breaths of cold winter air before you put your lips on the breathalyzer mouthpiece.
You might save yourself a world of grief.
Postscript:
We wrote our original post concerning how we beat the breathalyzer 2 years ago and it has always been one of our most popular blog posts. Unfortunately, a journalist used our post to write an article without giving us credit. She took significant portions from it.
Her article based on our blog post was picked up by other news outlets and inspired a number of other people to write about how to legally beat the breathalyzer in a roadside test.
It all stems from our blog post. We’re happy to see people discussing this topic, but we’re frustrated that this journalist relied on our work without giving us credit for our work.
If you wish to write a story on this second way to legally beat the breathalyzer, i.e. increase the chance of it producing lower readings, please give us credit for having figured this out.