FATIMA SCHROEDER
High Court Writer
TRAFFIC officers are not sufficiently equipped to carry out Dräger breathalyser tests on people arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol.
This is the evidence which a Kewtown man and his legal team intend to lead in a test case in the Western Cape High Court, aimed at determining the reliability of the controversial Dräger device.
At the centre of the case is the accused, Clifford Hendricks of Kewtown, who was arrested in January last year after a Dräger machine at the Athlone shadow centre recorded the amount of alcohol on his breath to be 0.95mg of breath.
The legal limit is 0.24 per 1 000ml of breath.
Hendricks denies that he was drunk and, in a plea explanation before the court, said he disputed whether the machine which recorded his breath alcohol level functioned correctly, and whether the officer who operated it was qualified to do so.
He will also question whether the machine was capable of determining the alcohol level on his breath, and whether it could distinguish between ethyl alcohol and other short-chain carbon compounds.
Yesterday, during the first day of trial before Judge Nathan Erasmus, the Athlone shadow centre’s John Gaven testified that he was the traffic official who recorded Hendricks’ breath-alcohol level that night.
Machine ARZN 0051 was used for Hendricks at 7.37pm on January 23, 2010.
The machine had been in use since December 16, 2009.
He said the specific machine conducted an average of 50 breath-alcohol tests in a weekend.
William King, one of the advocates representing Hendricks, put it to him that one could expect something to go wrong if a machine was used constantly in that manner.
But Gaven was adamant that the machine had operated without any hiccups, leaving the premises only for services or to be calibrated.
King also questioned Gaven about the type of training officers received.
Gaven testified that he and his colleagues had attended a three-day training course, during which they were taught how to operate the Dräger.
The test case, which has been brought in co-operation with the Legal Aid Board, seeks to obtain clarity surrounding the Dräger device.