Soon, get clicked while taking drink driving test

With an aim to make the anti-drink driving campaign more effective, the state police are all set to purchase a new set of breath alcohol analysers with in-built printers and cameras with flash. A tender for the same has already been issued.

The new analysers will be sent to police centres in the city and districts. The police said they have ordered 65 news sets and will order more if the machines prove effective.

While the old sets have helped curb drink driving, some technical issues have troubled officials.

“The biggest issue has been people sending some other person to court during sentencing in drink driving cases,” an officer of the traffic department said, on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media.

“Some people have even gone to the extent of producing air tickets and hotel bills of a different city to try and prove their absence from the city on the date they were caught,” the officer said.

Having a camera will just help curb such practices in the future, the officer added. The set will just not have camera and a printer but it will have flash as most drunk drivers are caught at night, the police said.

Inspector general of police (Procurement) KL Bishnoi said, “The new analysers will be helpful as a part of evidence in courts,” he said.

The police said that compared to the old analysers, the new ones will work faster. While the old machine takes around 30 seconds to detect alcohol, the new machines will do it within 10 seconds.

The weight of the new machines will be less than 400gm while the old ones weighed 500 gm, they added.

Advocate and former IPS officer YP Singh told HT that buying the new machines was a good move.

He pointed out, however, that according to the Information Technology Act, filming a person without his permission was not allowed.

“The way buildings under CCTV surveillance have a written warning, the police will have to inform offenders that they are being filmed on camera,” he said.