Driving Under the Influence of...Gasoline?
Information courtesy of Lawrence Taylor - DUIblog
Folks who have read my recent post, "Why Breathalyzers Dont Measure Alcohol", seem quite surprised to find out these DUI machines are not as reliable as MADD and law enforcement agencies would have us believe. In fact, the manufacturers of these things refuse to even warrant them to do what theyre supposed to: accurately measure blood-alcohol levels (see my earlier post, "Breathalyzers: Why Arent They Warranted to Measure Alcohol?")
So how reliable are these "breathalyzers" that determine a persons guilt or innocence in DUI cases? And just what DO they measure?
Well, thousands of different chemical compounds, according to scientists. Gasoline for one. Consider an article appearing on the front page of the Spokane Spokesman-Review (August 24, 1988), in which a person sitting in jail awaiting trial for DUI claimed that he had nothing to drink. He said he had run out of gas and had been siphoning gasoline from a container into his tank before being stopped by the officer and arrested. In siphoning, he had sucked on the hose to get it started and accidentally swallowed a small amount of the gasoline. He claimed that this must have caused the later high breathalyzer reading.
The individual finally talked the sheriff into a demonstration to prove his story. Taken from his cell after one week of incarceration, he swallowed a cup of unleaded gasoline and then blew into the breath machine -- in this case, an "Intoximeter 3000".
The results? After 5 minutes, the reading was .00%.....after 10 minutes, .04%......after 20 minutes, the Intoximeter registered .31%.....and after one hour, the reading was .28%. Even after three hours, the person still blew a .24% on the machine -- three times the legal limit! (A quick call from the sheriff to a local gasoline distributor confirmed that gasoline contains no alcohol.)
This was not a freak occurrence. The results have been scientifically verified in a study conducted by CMI, Inc.,