If you blew Fail on a police roadside breathalyzer and it made no sense on the basis of what you had to drink, it’s possible that you blew into a defective breathalyzer. It happens.
Sometimes the breathalyzer, what we call an Approved Screening Device or simply “ASD,” has some catastrophic problem that causes it to give wrong readings. When the 90-day IRP law was introduced, we began collecting internal police documents and after a while, we recognized some frightening patterns of defective breathalyzers.
In one notorious case, an Abbotsford police officer at the roadside decided to demonstrate the ASD for a driver he was about to test. But then the officer himself blew Fail despite not drinking.
As we started to collect information and build a library of defective breathalyzer problems, we determined that there was a manufacturing flaw in one model of the device within a specific serial number range. It was so bad that our own lawyers, Kyla Lee and Paul Doroshenko, went public with the records. Officers themselves were unsure of the ASDs they were using, and in January and February 2015, all of the ASDs in BC were replaced.
Breathalyzers that were new are now old
For a year it was very rare to see one of the new ASDs recalled for being defective, and even if they were defective, the evidence of it was never clear enough to call it out. We observed police officers reporting status messages that indicated some were not functioning properly, but the overall consensus was they were generally reliable. Officers were being very gentle and careful with them, so most seemed to be working properly, but as time went on, problems began to become apparent.
We’re approaching 8 years since the AlcoSensor IV DWF was replaced with the AlcoSensor FST and many of these ASDs that are used across the province have been in service for 8 years. When we review the records now, we see there are problems that indicate defective breathalyzers continue to be an issue.
In some instances, the ASD simply can’t be calibrated or hold calibration. In others, we see ASDs that have become wet and therefore unreliable, some, where the display only partially works, and others where the ASD works intermittently. It is rare, but there are also instances of the problems we saw with the older devices – a faulty connection between the processor chip and the circuit board.
Despite problems found with the breathalyzers, there are no instructions in the Motor Vehicle Act for the police to notify either the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles or the drivers, when the officer later realizes that the breathalyzer was defective. It’s a shameful oversight in our view, especially considering we went through a scandal concerning defective breathalyzers a mere 8 years ago.
If you have concerns that a breathalyzer you blew into was defective and are now facing consequences for it, don’t hesitate to contact our office. We have lots of experience with these types of cases and are always happy to help.