DRUNKOMETER.

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXVI, Issue 142, 26 August 1938, Page 4

DRUNKOMETER.

NEW DRIVINB TEST MEASURES SOBRIETY. SAN FRANCISCO, August 1. Sixty per cent, or more of all traffic fatalities and injuries are traceable to the use of alcohol at the wrong time and place, Judge Harry H. Porter, of the Illinois Municipal Court of Evanston, told officials of the Automobile Club of Southern California, where he demonstrated science’s latest invention to determine drunken drivers. The machine is called the Harger drunkometer, and was recently perfected by Dr. Rollo H. Harger, of the University of Indiana School of Medicine. Operating on the principle of a breath test—one of five tests given to determine drunken driving—the suspected drunken driver is given a toy balloon into which his breath is discharged. This is then placed on the drunkometer, which determines by a chemical process the exact alcoholic content. ‘ ‘ Out of the 60 per cent, of drunken drivers involved in traffic accidents, only 19 per cent, are sufficiently intoxicated so that by the use of the old-fashioned methods the law-en-forcing authorities have a reasonable chance to convict,” Judge Porter said. This means that the other 41 per cent, are being passed, and this is the group that is the most dangerous of all on the highways, declared the Judge, who is also chairman of the National Safety 'Council's committee on tests for driver intoxication. “The dangerous driver,” he said, “is the man who has had a few drinks and is absolutely convieed of his own sobriety and of his unequalled driving perfection—the type who insists that he is a better driver when he has had a few drinks than when he is completely sober.” Such a driver is not recognised as

being drunk by the average police | officer or layman because he does not ' exhibit the objective symptoms of ■ drunkenness in sufficient degree, and is therefore the hardest one to convict, Judge Porter said. With the use of the drunkometer more convictions will be obtained by enforcement officers, he believes. Judge Porter subsequently demonstrated the machine to members of the club and officials in the club’s auditorium.