Alcohol-Sensitive Devices on Cars Let Some Breathe Easier

A retail manager in Garden Grove avoids using mouthwash before getting into his car. If he is sucking on breath mints, he spits them out. And he takes care in choosing what kind of cologne he uses after his morning shower.

The reason is that any one of those things could cause his car’s breath analyzer to think that he is intoxicated, in which case the engine would not start.

“The machine is sensitive,” said the man, a convicted drunk driver who did not want his name used. “You have to be careful of what you put in your mouth.”

He is one of more than 400 people in Orange County whose cars are equipped with ignition interlock devices that prevent vehicles from starting if the driver has alcohol on his or her breath.

The devices were installed by court order under a state law, which took effect in 1993, that allows judges to require them in the vehicles of second-time drunk-driving offenders as an alternative to more drastic measures such as suspending their licenses.

“They are the most effective way to keep drunk drivers off the road,” said Leslie Whittinghill, a spokeswoman for the California Assn. of Interlock Service Providers, a trade group for companies that install and maintain the devices.

Yet experts on alcohol and drug abuse, as well as many judges in Orange County and elsewhere, remain skeptical about the effectiveness of the devices, which sell for about $600 or can be leased for about $60 a month.

“I don’t think they work,” said Pamela Iles, a judge in Municipal Court in Laguna Niguel, who said she prefers to suspend an offender’s license. The devices, she said, are “very expensive to put in, and I think they are easily defeated.”

That view is apparently widely held. Of about 13,000 Orange County motorists arrested for drunk driving in 1995, only 1,173, or about 9%, were ordered by judges to install ignition interlock devices in their cars, Department of Motor Vehicles records show.

The rate for Los Angeles County was even lower, about 7%.

Resembling a cellular telephone mounted on the dashboard, the breath analyzer requires the driver to blow into a mouthpiece before starting the car. If the device detects a specific amount of alcohol--usually about half the legal limit--the engine will not turn over.

If an unacceptable level of alcohol is not detected, the car will start. The device requires retests, however, at intervals ranging from five minutes to half an hour.

Results of a failed test on the road vary, depending on the model of the device. Some simply record the data for later monitoring by court officials; others cause the car’s horn to sound or its headlights to flash until the driver pulls over.

The driver is required to take the vehicle to a service center every 60 days so that data in the breath analyzer’s computers can be downloaded and the data turned over to the court.

Skeptics say the devices can be beaten by determined motorists who persuade sober cohorts to provide “clean” breath samples, an offense that, if detected, carries a $5,000 fine and up to six months in jail for both people involved.

Judges typically offer offenders other options too, such as selling their cars rather than fitting them with breath analyzers.

“What I see happening,” said Sharon Herbert, a program director for the Orange County chapter of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, “is that they usually sell the vehicle to a friend or a family member and continue to drive it.”

Mothers Against Drunk Driving has taken a position in support of the technology nationally, but its California organization remains neutral.

Reidel Post, executive director of the Orange County chapter of MADD, said she has personal concerns about the device. “You wouldn’t give somebody who was guilty of a drive-by shooting a gun with a locking system on it,” she said. “To me, this dilutes the seriousness of impaired driving.”

Further, the devices, besides being hypersensitive to such substances as mouthwash and breath mints, don’t always prove themselves.

In a recent demonstration at Speaker Factory, a Santa Ana shop that installs a particular brand of breath analyzer, technicians used a machine to generate air flows with a high alcohol content. The aim was to show what happens when a driver fails the test.

But the machine kept passing the “driver” until store owner Dan Riemer got involved, lacing his breath with mouthwash until the detector eventually responded.

“I think we may have used up our test sample,” Riemer said later of the alcohol mixture being used in the test.

Some jurists are giving the device a test run, though.

“It’s on the books,” said Craig Robison, presiding judge at Municipal Court in Newport Beach. He said he has ordered about 100 of the devices installed since 1993.

Faced with a person convicted twice of drunk driving, Robison said, he generally orders the device installed on the offender’s car unless convinced that a license suspension would be more appropriate.

“I have records from one of these devices demonstrating that the defendant attempted to start the vehicle unsuccessfully on many occasions,” Robison said. “It may not deter them” from trying to drive, he said, “but it certainly keeps them from starting and driving their vehicles.”

Among the device’s most ardent supporters, in fact, are drivers who have been ordered to use it.

“It absolutely does the job,” said a 44-year-old aerospace worker from Mission Viejo who was ordered to install the device six months ago. “I’m in a position where drinking and driving is out of the question.”

Another advocate is a Newport Beach building contractor who says that living with the device has convinced him to stay sober.

“My drinking days are in the wind,” he said. “If this had been in my car for a period of time after my first conviction, maybe it would have gotten through my head a little quicker.”