Drager 7510 hand-held breath screening devices are being withdrawn from service and sent for further testing as a precautionary measure by Police following discovery of a technical issue with the some of the devices.
Four hundred of the devices were progressively rolled out by Police during July to 1, 2 and 3 person stations in mostly rural areas of the country. However, a recent random spot test by Police has revealed a problem with the calibration of some of the machines.
National Manager Road Policing, Superintendent Steve Greally, says while the issue is being investigated, Police will continue to test drink drivers as normal using the Drager 6510 breath screening device, a previous model which is still in widespread use.
"Operationally, there will be no change to our continued enforcement of drink drive offences, as testing machines in booze buses and stations are unaffected. This means anyone caught driving while impaired can expect to be dealt with in the same way," Mr Greally says.
"As soon as the issue was discovered we made contact with Drager and sought urgent assurance that this problem will be fixed. In the meantime, as a precautionary step, we have removed all of the devices from service, which have now been sent to Drager for further testing to determine the exact nature and scale of the issue."
Mr Greally says the initial spot checks revealed that two of the devices tested did not meet the required international and NZ Police calibration standards, despite being tested and calibrated correctly before rollout. This prompted the recall of all 7510 devices.
As of this afternoon, 319 devices have now been tested, with 49 of those showing faults. Of the 49 affected devices, 23 have returned positive evidential results.
To date, about 80 infringements / charges from the 23 devices returning positive results are believed to have been affected as a result of the fault. While more work is underway to identify the individual circumstances of each offence, Mr Greally says the number is small in the context of the approximately 21,000 alcohol-related offences recorded by Police in the last year.
There are currently 2,900 other alcohol testing devices used by Police which have an excellent reliability record.
"Although it is unclear at this stage exactly how the error with some of the 7510 hand-held devices has occurred and how many in total may end up being affected, we are committed to ensuring that all of the devices are working correctly and fairly.
"While the devices that have failed have only done so by a very small margin, for the avoidance of any doubt we have decided to waive any infringements or charges that may have resulted from them. Those in this bracket should therefore consider themselves very lucky to have avoided Police action in this instance.
"This means that if it emerges that anyone has been ticketed or prosecuted incorrectly as a result of this problem, the action will be withdrawn by Police. "We'll also be contacting those people affected to inform them of what's occurred and what we'll be doing to address the issue."
ENDS
Media contact: Ross Henderson PNHQ Public Affairs, ph 021 192 2919