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people.co.uk, 22nd April 2007
MOTORISTS will face RANDOM breath tests in a massive crackdown on drink driving.
Police will have the right to ask ANY driver to blow into a breathalyser.
And in another key move to cut the 3,000 road deaths and serious injuries caused by drunks each year a new super-accurate roadside breath test device will be introduced from summer next year.
Random testing will be launched as a pilot scheme at accident blackspots to judge if there is likely to be a backlash from drivers. A Home Office spokesman said: "We will consider fully random breath tests if they are not seen as an unfair inconvenience to law-abiding motorists."
At present police can only test drivers after an accident, if they see a moving traffic offence or reasonably suspect the person at the wheel of boozing. Road safety charity Brake said: "Random tests will undoubtedly deter people who at present think they can get away with drink driving because of the slim chance of having to take a test. "Present rules are far too restrictive. By the time police have reason to stop drivers someone could have been killed."
Results from the new breathalysers will be accepted as proof in court cases - cutting out the need for time-consuming follow-up breath, blood or urine samples. And boozy drivers who slip back below the limit by the time they are taken to a police station will no longer escape.
Police minister Vernon Coaker said Whitehall experts will approve prototypes of the new devices later this year. The makers will then have nine months to develop them so police patrols can start using them in summer 2008.
Mr Coaker added: "Evidential testing at the roadside will save time and enable more enforcement."
Magistrates will also be urged to order offenders to fit their cars with ignition interlocking - which lets the engine start only after the driver gives a negative test on a dashboard breathalyser.
The Road Safety Act already gives JPs the right to make the device a condition of a drink-driver getting his licence back after he completes his ban. Britain and Denmark are the only EU countries without random testing.
Half of drivers killed between 10pm and 4am are above the limit of 80mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood. Ministers have so far resisted calls to lower the limit to the equivalent of a pint of beer or large glass of wine.
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