Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday November 05 2019, @04:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the take-a-deep-breath-before-reading dept.

These Machines Can Put You in Jail. Don't Trust Them.

A million Americans a year are arrested for drunken driving, and most stops begin the same way: flashing blue lights in the rearview mirror, then a battery of tests that might include standing on one foot or reciting the alphabet.

What matters most, though, happens next. By the side of the road or at the police station, the drivers blow into a miniature science lab that estimates the concentration of alcohol in their blood. If the level is 0.08 or higher, they are all but certain to be convicted of a crime.

But those tests — a bedrock of the criminal justice system — are often unreliable, a New York Times investigation found. The devices, found in virtually every police station in America, generate skewed results with alarming frequency, even though they are marketed as precise to the third decimal place.

Judges in Massachusetts and New Jersey have thrown out more than 30,000 breath tests in the past 12 months alone, largely because of human errors and lax governmental oversight. Across the country, thousands of other tests also have been invalidated in recent years.

The machines are sensitive scientific instruments, and in many cases they haven't been properly calibrated, yielding results that were at times 40 percent too high. Maintaining machines is up to police departments that sometimes have shoddy standards and lack expertise. In some cities, lab officials have used stale or home-brewed chemical solutions that warped results. In Massachusetts, officers used a machine with rats nesting inside.

[...] Technical experts have found serious programming mistakes in the machines' software. States have picked devices that their own experts didn't trust and have disabled safeguards meant to ensure the tests' accuracy.

[...] Yet the tests have become all but unavoidable. Every state punishes drivers who refuse to take one when ordered by a police officer.

I strongly suggest reading the entire article. Breath-taking and sobering is an understatement.

Also at CNET


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 05 2019, @07:50PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 05 2019, @07:50PM (#916484) Journal

    I remember in school four decades ago, my initial confusion about the difference between precision and accuracy.

    My daily commute to work is about 21,387,528 miles, 785 feet, 3 and 7/32 inches.

    Highly precise -- to the 32nd of an inch!

    Ridiculously inaccurate. Implausibly so.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2