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Why Aren’t Breath Tests Reliable?

Posted on July 10, 2010
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If you or someone you know has ever been accused of DUI, you know it’s a hard charge to beat. After all, they usually have the breath test to use against you, an instrument that appears to be scientific and infallible at first glance. But, as a Seattle DUI lawyer I can tell you those tests are not as reliable as they first seem, and I’m going to tell you why.

The main problem with the breath test is that it doesn’t utilize recognized scientific methods to get at it’s result. It’s not that it’s junk science, it’s just that the toxicologist technicians and the lab experts usually leave out a few steps because it would take a little too long, and it would hurt many of their cases. The main problem lies with failing to recognize levels of uncertainty in their results.

Because you aren’t a DUI attorney, you probably aren’t that familiar with the science behind the breath test or general scientific principals. I know I wasn’t before I started digging into this stuff. But no matter what your level of education, it’s easy to understand one thing – there is no way to get a 100% correct measurement of anything. There are always some outside effects in place (called interferants) that gum up the results. So, in a scientific setting, every measurement affords some level of uncertainty, or error.

For example, let’s say you were measuring the temperature of something. You might say it is 45 degrees Fahrenheit plus or minus .2 degrees. That recognizes some error in the measurement tool and some other effects that could make the actual temperature .2 degrees different either way.

The same holds true for breath tests. And sometimes the error rates are dramatic. But you don’t ever hear about that when you see breath test results on television or from a prosecutor (or from a cop). But ask any true DUI lawyer and he’ll tell you all about interferants and confidence intervals and how inaccurate these tests really are.

Breath tests aren’t reliable because they introduce no level of uncertainty, like all scientific results must (think standard deviation from your statistics class). Without that information, the test results mean nothing.

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