The Draeger Alcotest 9510 Breath Machines are Coming!

Posted Saturday, October 14, 2017 by Andrew Charles Huff

The Washington State Patrol has been slowly replacing the old DataMaster Breath test Machines with the new German-manufactured Draeger Alcotest 9510, a device primarily based on the same flawed fundamentals as the old machines. At this point, King County has not begun using these machines but that point will be here soon. The Draeger Alcotest machines have been installed in Snohomish County. However, due to some courageous litigation challenging the manufactures’ reluctance to disclose basic documents about its technology, prosecutors so far have decided not to use breath results.

The main concern with the Draeger is with the software and how it manipulates the reported results. Questions are being raised whether some of the algorithms used are based on science at all. Further, Draeger, an old German company, sells their machines exclusively to governments and has refused to disclose the source codes and technical information to the public, thereby concealing the information from the public.

I have recently filed a challenge to the Draeger Alcotest results currently being used in Island County and will post updates as litigation progresses.