New Booze Busting Device

Reported November 2007

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Save your breath, a new tool for testing suspected drunk drivers will have cops asking, ”Stick out your arm.”

Last year more than 17-and-a-half thousand people in this country were killed in alcohol related crashes. Getting drunk drivers off the street is a job for law enforcement and thanks to a new tool; their jobs may soon get easier.

“They really think with those few beers or shots that they’re okay and the fact is most drivers who cause fatality accidents are right around that legal limit of point eight or nine,” Sheriff Deputy Kyle Hartsock of the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department, DWI Unit, told Ivanhoe.

Just how drunk is registered now by a field sobriety test … including a Breathalyzer, which can be messy and time consuming. But now, testing suspected drunk drivers is about to go hi-tech.

Developed by engineers, the tru-touch 11-hundred uses Spectroscopy by shining different wavelengths of light onto the skin.

“It’s the same as taking a flashlight, placing it over your hand like the kids do at Halloween … you see the light come through,” Jim McNally, President and CEO of TruTouch Technologies, told Ivanhoe.

The system measures the light reflected back, which reveals how much alcohol is in the person's skin.

“So all we do is simply lift this lid which exposes the touch pad … this is how the light comes out of the machine and will go in and out of his tissue," McNally said.

It's non-invasive and results come back in minutes! Right now the new “booze-busting” system is being tested by officers in several cities and could be on the streets by next year. Besides getting drunk drivers off the street, the makers say the device can be used in emergency rooms, prisons, schools and work places … anywhere where alcohol use and safety is a concern.

The Optical Society of America contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Ben Ver Steeg, Vice President Engineering
Tru Touch Technologies, Inc.
(505) 272-7027
Ben.VerSteeg@TruTouchTechnologies.com

Optical Society of America
Washington, DC 20036-1023
(202) 223-8130
http://www.osa.org
info@osa.org

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