It’s a common sight on the city roads late night, more so in weekends — cops making surprise checks for drunken driving sporting breath analysers. But with a large number of peeved drivers complaining about the inaccurate reading on the breath analysers, police had to do a bit of rechecking their equipment.
The issue has now come to the notice of senior officials, who further detected the cause and recalibrated the equipment.
What they found was that a vent on the back of the device, which releases the breath of a checked person, was being blocked, as a result of which the device was flashing false reading.
Blocked vent
Senior officials detected that closure of the vent — either involuntarily or deliberately — by the checking personnel was often leading to ugly scenes on the roads, with those subjected to checking arguing that the devices were fixed.
Taking the complaints into consideration and preventing police officials from blocking the vent, the traffic wing officials are fixing metal clamps on the gadget to ensure air outlet is not blocked, a senior officer said.
Fresh breath
“This will facilitate free discharge of breath through the vent and result in correct reading of the alcohol content. Earlier, the air was stuck within the device due to blocking of the outlet and resulted in inflation of the reading to the next driver,” he added.
Traffic Police in Hyderabad is equipped with 125 breath analysers, of which four are out of service. “In 2016 we procured 70 devices and the rest were bought last year,” the officer said.
“Once the clamps are installed there won’t be any scope for arguments on wrong reading,” he said.
The devices are recalibrated once a year, and from Friday, the metal clips have been fixed on them.
