Centre Proposes New Rules for Breath Analysers to Enhance Road Safety

New Delhi: The Centre has introduced new draft regulations for Evidential Breath Analysers under the Legal Metrology (General) Rules, 2011, aiming to enhance their accuracy and reliability. Announced by the Legal Metrology Division of the Department of Consumer Affairs, this initiative targets improving the precision of breath analysers used by law enforcement and workplaces, thus boosting public safety and trust.

The standardized Evidential Breath Analysers will measure blood alcohol concentration from breath samples accurately, ensuring that intoxicated individuals are identified promptly. This step is crucial in preventing alcohol-related incidents on roads, promoting safer travel for everyone.

Key features of the new rules include mandatory standardized testing procedures for breath analysers to ensure consistent and reliable results across devices, fostering public confidence in enforcement actions. The ministry emphasized that these devices must be verified and stamped per the Legal Metrology Act, 2009, to maintain their accuracy and protect individuals from wrongful penalties due to faulty equipment.

The draft rules specify several technical requirements for these devices, including displaying only the final measurement result, incorporating a printer to record results, and ensuring operation only when paper is available. Additional printed information alongside the blood alcohol concentration result and various reporting formats are also required.

Defined as instruments that measure and display the breath alcohol mass concentration within specified error limits, Evidential Breath Analysers must use mouthpieces for sampling breath. The rules include provisions for various tests to verify the instrument’s accuracy, with yearly verification to ensure ongoing precision.