Pat Roxborough, Staff Reporter
WESTERN BUREAU -
THE NATIONAL Road Safety Council's (NRSC) lobby for the Government to lower the legal alcohol consumption limit for motorists has been set back by a lack of information on Jamaicans who drink and drive.
The inadequacy is, in part, because more than half of the island's breath analysis machines - the Intoxilyzer 5000s - are out of service.
"Only 14 machines are working, 21 are defective and are with the Bureau of Standards waiting to be fixed, so the programme is just not running at full strength, as the police are not going to stop you if they don't have a machine to take you to," said the NRSC Executive Director Paula Fletcher.
Currently the parishes of St. Elizabeth, Hanover and Trelawny do not have the Intoxilyzer 5000s, which are stored at various police stations across the island and are used by the police to measure and provide print-outs of the amount of alcohol in an individual's breath for use as court evidence.
However, Inspector Pauline Foster-Turner, co-ordinator of the Breathalyser Unit in the Police Traffic Department, said she would be installing a machine in Hanover next month.
According to James Kerr, the head of the Bureau of Standard's Chemistry Department, three machines had already been fixed and a fourth would be soon.
"Most of them have battery problems as the internal batteries last for about five or six years," he said last week. "When the battery goes this affects the clock on the machine and the readings reflect errors. Some of the machines have more serious problems, and depending on what those problems are, we will determine if we will be able to fix them."
The NRSC had been counting on the evidence printed out by the machines to substantiate its claims that there is a link between road accidents and various breath alcohol levels below the legal limit. However, the crippled machines, coupled with the fact that the police did not record all the data that the NRSC needed, derailed its plan.
"We compiled a report last year based on data collated over a three-year period starting in 1996, but the police only recorded information pertaining to people who drove above the prescribed alcohol limit," said Mrs. Fletcher. "So we had no statistical basis on which to justify a reduction of the limit."
Superintendent Dudley Bryan, head of the Police Traffic Department explained that "What happens most of the time is that when the policeman sees that the reading is under the legal limit he tends to ignore it. We continue to tell them, however, that it is important to record the negative as well as the positive readings so that at the end of the day or any given period of time we can furnish the results of all the tests we conducted.
"Some policemen are doing it, but most are not," he added.
Under Jamaican laws, motorists may drive with up to 35 micrograms of alcohol on every 100 millimeters of breath and in their blood.
The NRSC has been lobbying since early last year for the limit to be lowered on the basis that in many instances, people were found to be drunk even though the limits of alcohol in their breath and blood were found to be under 35 micrograms, a point confirmed by Inspector Foster-Turner.
"We have had instances where the alcohol on people's breath read 25 micrograms, 30 micrograms, 19 micrograms - readings which are all below the prescribed limit - yet they were intoxicated," she said.
Police statistics show that between December 1995 and June 21, 2000, some 1,300 motorists were found to be driving above the limit. Another 82 refused to take the breath test, insisting they were sober and opting for the automatic conviction and suspension of their driver's licence.
