Breathalyzer - www.hangover.org

Will urinalyzers cut down on DUI’s?

We all know how and why breathalyzers work. You blow into a tube and it can accurately detect your blood alcohol content (BAC). If you have ever seen a breathalyzer hopefully it was because you owned one that you used to keep an eye on your own BAC and it wasn’t because you are drunk driving. If it was because you were drunk driving, at least you and the rest of the people on the road are safe. Drunk driving is dangerous and causes thousands of accidents a year. Many people needlessly die due to drunk driving and law enforcement as well as groups such as MADD; have been trying to combat it for years now. Finally there may be an answer to the drunk driving epidemic: urinalyzers.

Few people actually have the extra cash to spend on a portable breathalyzer and even fewer people who have a portable breathalyzer with them, actually use it. The drunker people get the less responsible, shall we say, they get. This is where the urine-analyzer rightly dubbed the “urinalyzer”) comes in. A urinalyzers is a new device which measures your BAC when you go to the bathroom after a few drinks, a lot of drinks, or you can’t even walk to the bathroom in a straight line amount of drinks. These urinalyzers are the newest thing in nightclub technology created by a marketing agency DDB and Zouk, a popular night club in Singapore.

The urinalyzer is a creative and clever device that is meant to stop drunks before they ever become drivers. Therefore the urinalyzer is meant to stop drunk drivers. So how does a urinalyzer work?

First off, when you enter the nightclub you hand over your car keys in exchange for a special RFID card from the valet.
Second, you have a few drinks.
Third, you go to relieve yourself and the card will pair with the urine analyzer which then provides instant feedback on a screen above your urinal.

If you have gone above the limit and don’t listen to the warning that you just got from your urinal, the RFID card will warn the valet pretty much not to let you drive. The valet will then offer you many other ways to get home that don’t involve you getting behind the wheel of a car. They may offer to call you a cab or pitch to you their own drive-home service.

The urinalyzer is a new proactive technology so it has plenty of room to develop and fix any minor inconveniences or problems; the biggest one right now being the fact that women don’t use urinals. It won’t be surprising if eventually the urinalyzer finds its way into the women’s restroom too. But in the meantime the urinalyzer has stopped 573 people over the legal limit; in only two weeks. The sad news about that is only 342 took the valet up on the cab or drive-home service but those numbers could improve and include every person over the limit with police involvement.

Either way it seems more than hopeful that yes, urinalyzers will cut down on DUI’s.

http://www.thefix.com/content/urinalyzers-tag-drunk-clubgoers91941

If you need help with your addiction give us a call now at 1-800-984-4003.

How does a breathalyzer work?

Usually when you hear about people getting DUI’s, there will be some reference to the blood alcohol content (BAC) of the driver. If their blood alcohol content is over the legal limit of the state they are driving in, they are charged with Driving Under the Influence (DUI) or Driving While Intoxicated (DWI.) But just how do cops at the scene measure BAC? Are they taking blood tests in the field?

Cops use a device called a breathalyzer to measure a person’s blood alcohol content. A breathalyzer is a device that tests your breath to determine how intoxicated you are.

How does a breathalyzer work? Why test?

Cops needed a way to test BAC in the field that was practical. Sure, they could use urine or blood tests, but how would they do that on the side of the highway while pulling someone over? And with blood tests, they had to think about how to take blood in a sterile manner and the legal implications of such an invasive test. In the 1940’s, the breathalyzer was invented.

How does a breathalyzer work? Alcohol and your body.

Alcohol gets absorbed into your blood stream after you ingest it. Then, when the blood goes through the lungs, some of the alcohol moves across the membranes of the lung’s air sacs into the air, because alcohol will evaporate from a solution. So the amount of alcohol in the air sacs is proportional to the amount of alcohol in the blood stream. When the air in the air sacks is exhaled, you can test the air and figure out how much alcohol is in the blood stream. The proportion of breath alcohol to blood alcohol is 2,100:1. This means that 2100 ml of air from the air sacks will have the same amount of alcohol in it as 1ml of blood.

How does a breathalyzer work? Legal limits.

In many states, the legal limit is 0.08 BAC. This means you have 0.08 grams of alcohol in your system per 100 ml of blood. If your BAC is higher than that and you are considered too impaired to drive, you can be arrested.

How does a breathalyzer work? Chemical reaction.

The breathalyzer uses a chemical reaction involving alcohol to test a suspect’s breath. The suspect breathes into the device and the air goes into a solution of chemicals. The chemicals change color when they react to the alcohol. The degree of color change is proportional to the amount of alcohol in the air that was in the air. The device then produces an electric current in response to the amount of color change which causes the needle in the meter to move from its resting place. The operator then rotates a knob to bring the needle back to the resting place and reads the level of alcohol from the knob — the more the operator must turn the knob to return it to rest, the greater the level of alcohol.

How does a breathalyzer work? Accuracy.

The reading on a breathalyzer can vary up to 0.01 g/dl in any direction. Breathalyzers actually don’t measure blood alcohol content directly; they measure the alcohol on your breath and attempt to estimate your BAC. Only a blood test can give a truly accurate reading of blood alcohol level. Factors such as vomit or blood in the mouth, body temp and blood composition, and the presence of chemicals that are similar to alcohol can skew the results.