SOBERCHECK: an affordable personal breathalyser

Everyone has a different relationship with alcohol and that was never more obvious than during a year of trials with the Draeger SoberCheck - a compact, affordable handheld digital alcohol detector. By the time one reaches adulthood, almost everybody has had a number of experiences with alcohol and its ability to distort reality to a greater or lesser extent. The results of the trial changed everyone involved. The SoberCheck provided dozens of our associates with a reality check on just what their blood alcohol levels were in comparison to what they thought they were - almost invariably, everyone erred several points lower than they really were and we found that this errant judgement would often have been the difference between driving legally and illegally. Remarkably, the SoberCheck emerged as remarkable educational tool, not just in what you need to do to keep your obligation to society and ensure you are driving under the alcohol limit, but about alcohol and its effects in general. Education is about life preparedness – it is formally teaching us the things we need to know to contribute effectively and manage our lives effectively. The SoberCheck could be the enabling tool in the educational process.

The Sobercheck is about the size of a large mobile phone at 120x60x25mm though it's unlikely that you'd ever carry it on one's person.

It comes in a small case which easily fits in a glovebox and unlike the Gizmag tests where we regularly took the Sobercheck to our local bar and gave everyone a try at estimating their blood alcohol content, the glovebox is the ideal place for it.

Gizmag's not-so-clinically performed testing found conclusively that counting drinks was a particularly inaccurate way of estimating one’s blood alcohol content - groups of people who were doing "rounds' and had drunk the same number of vinos often had alarmingly different alcohol blood levels.

The more we looked, the more we realised that the old rule about "the number of standard drinks minus .01 per hour since you started" is not the best way to calculate one's alcohol levels.

It may be the average, but no-one was average when we measured them. While the size of the person is an obvious key variable in the blood alcohol level equation, there are a host of others, with gender, metabolism and the amount of food in your stomach being contributing factors but by no means the full story.

We also found alcohol levels continue to rise for at least half an hour after the last drink of alcohol and that while most people wake up with a blood alcohol reading of zero, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that the morning after a big night, you could still be legally drunk.

On the other hand, some of the larger more-seasoned veterans could make a huge dint in their reading given a few hours of sleep. There was also quite a variation on readings FROM DAY TO DAY - several times we encountered the same person drinking a similar number of drinks could result in quite different blood alcohol level a couple of days later. Given that alcohol is the population's legislated drug of choice, the Sober Check's presence and subsequent results gave rise to some interesting conversation.

Most of the people who tried it were regular alcohol users and most considered they had a pretty good handle on their blood alcohol levels after a few drinks - once we'd convinced them of the accuracy of the device, most acknowledged that reality was quite different to their perceptions!

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