this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
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Why don't American cops have breathalyzers in the car and instead elect to do this interpretive dance on the side of the road?
The handheld ones can't be used as evidence in most jurisdictions. SFSTs can be.
It's wild to think a machine which is built to detect alcohol in your breath is less reliable than a human interpreting the dance of another human. "The breathalyzer showed 0.07 but I let them do the dance and it looked more like a 0.09 to me, so I took them in."
And for anyone claiming other substances will not show in a breathalyzer but the dancing. That's what swab tests are for. Collect sample, let chemicals do their thing and decide on wether the indicator turned red or green, with way less interpretation needed than an arbitrary dance.
Having worked in the industry, the machines detecting alcohol aren't unreliable, and the way they work gives the benefit of the doubt to the person blowing.
It's the same here. When someone tests positive they're brought back to the station to a machine that's actually calibrated and can be used as evidence (sometimes it's in the back of the van if they're doing a lot of testing, but it's not carried in a car).