Now this is actually six different kinds of awesome right here, folks–now, you all probably remember the last time we brought up the idea of the breathalyzer, how it connected to your steering column and wouldn’t let you drive unless you blew a clean meter?

Well, this one isn’t quite so restrictive, but it IS a lot more portable.  It’s the Breathalyzer Keychain, and it is pretty much what it sounds like it is, a Breathalyzer on a key chain.  You know we love our key chains out here at Car Buyer’s Notebook, so this is definitely one we had to discuss.

You can actually TRACK your progression throughout the night, seeing what makes you drunker as you go, or trying to see how many pretzels it takes to drop your blood alcohol content.  I look for something like this to become the focus of dozens of bar contests as people bet on who’s drunker, or what somebody’s blood alcohol content is.

Best off, they’re not too pricey, either.  You can get one of these for as little as fifteen bucks.

Continue reading...

We’ve all been there at one time or another, out for an evening, and we’ve had a couple, and it’s not exactly easy to tell if you’re sufficiently blasted to call a cab or you can get your car home without too much trouble.  And frankly, it never helps that the cops have breathalyzers and such–because they can KNOW while you’re left to merely guess.

Now you can improve your guesses with the AlcoHawk portable breathalyzer.  It has a folding mouthpiece and an easy to read LED screen that tells you, just as surely as it tells the cops, just how much alcohol is in your system at any given time.

It’ll detect any range between nothing at all and .40, which is actually where you need to be in order to DIE FROM ALCOHOL POISONING, (the range, depending on tolerance, is actually about .37 to .50) so you know it’ll handle the complete range.

I personally like this idea, myself…if drunk drivers can keep themselves off the road, then that’s a whole lot fewer accidents.

Continue reading...

It looks like people who have been convicted of drinking while driving may be getting a big break with this news that the Intoxication meter has been found to be flawed. As we all know, the Intoximeter helps analyze a person’s breath. But should human error set in, inconsistencies on the proper reading may suffice, hence making it unreliable.

“This discovery means that not only will people who have been convicted have the right to apply for an appeal, but people taken to police stations with this equipment could face future convictions until this problem is corrected. We would urge all people who have been convicted of failure to provide a specimen of breath to contact us immediately.”

The problem lies in the mouthpiece, through which air is blown into the machine. The design of the part has proven difficult to use and has increased the likelihood of operator error, leading to cases where it is impossible for the motorist to blow enough breath to provide a sample, with no clear explanation as to why. Therefore, it is possible that a perfectly innocent motorist could face a charge of failure to provide a sample.

(Source) Press

Continue reading...