When is a random breath test not random?

Of course an RBT station set up like that is random!

What’s not random is when you’re minding your own business, not speeding or doing anything wrong, and they do a U-bolt in traffic to turn around and chase you down for one. Which is what has happened to me a few times, undoubtedly because of the kind of car I drive.

I’m not complaining by the way. I’m just saying your “not random” has nothing on my “not random”.

RaTTyRaTT said :

I have absolutely no problem with breath testing for the record, however I have a MASSIVE problem with where they setup the testing places. It was not long ago that they set up a testing area on Erindale Drive (near the large roundabout) working to pick up traffic coming from Woden to Tuggeranong. You go round the corner, and “no way to get away” is probably the thought some wise-arse had at the station.
Well, that’s fine – except for one thing. It’s a great way to A: test the brakes of people coming down Yamba Drive towards Tuggeranong (on the downside of the hill) and B: how to get a police officer killed in the line of duty.’
I got pulled by this setup, after having to emergency brake and gave the officer who came up to me a massive earful. Mostly he acted all high & mighty, until I pointed out a couple of factors, 1. if someone is doing 80Km/h down that hill, what is the stopping distance they have if they come round the corner, and the police setup about 25 – 50 metres beyond. 2. I believe Occupational Health & Safety would have a conniption fit if they saw that (along with the Police Union.)
It was the dumbest place to put a RBT I have ever seen, and told the guy that. Said to him that if he moved about another 100m down the road, he could get traffic coming off Sulwood Dr. and still be safer than where they were.

So, moral of the story, Cops aren’t always right, and most certainly it would be nice to meet a cop that was actually teachable/listening to people around them, rather than thinking he was the best thing since AIR was invented… (LOL)
Note: they didn’t follow my advice, thus a number of vehicles were doing emergency braking and nearly killing themselves on that corner, but the cops did clear out soon after… about 30 mins later they were gone.

If you’re travelling too fast to stop when the car in front of you stops, then it sure as sh1t ain’t the cops fault.

So you were tailgating and screeched to a stop, the gave the cop ‘an earful’, told him ‘It was the dumbest place to put a RBT I have ever seen’, and then you complain that they the police are ‘all high and mighty’ and ‘won’t take advice’?

BWAAA HA HA HAHAH AHAHA HAA

I, for one, am completely disgusted.

Why do they always do so-called ‘random’ breath testing on people driving cars? If it’s really going to be random, then they need to stop profiling people driving cars and do some *real* random testing: sneaking into bedrooms in the middle of the night, and truly random stuff like that.

Also, why just test people? That doesn’t seem particularly ‘random’ to me. I think it would be far more random if they started testing domesticated alpacas, pieces of driftwood, black carrots, sedimentary rocks and bits of Legos.

Roadside breathe testing shouldn’t be random, it should be targeted based on detailed profiling. There must be heaps of data about the people who have been caught driving, and this should be used more to improve the effectiveness of catching those who drink drive.

For example, certain days and times, certain places, hell even certain types of cars.

So, when did the random go out of random breath test?

Picking a group of drvers, or even all drivers using a particular route in fact, is a good way of ensuring randomness.

To pick and choose cars out of passing traffic is a way of ensuring bias.

Which bit of that do you find confusing?

Alderney said :

niftydog said :

I don’t understand why this bothers you.

I’m sorry, did I say it bothered me? Oh that’s right. I forgot about the bit that you know what’s going on in my head more than I do. My apologies.

You didn’t have to say it – it’s obvious from the tone of your posts. Why else would you go to the trouble of venting on this forum if it didn’t bother you?

Alderney said :

You obviously have a diferent understanding of the word ‘random’ than the rest of the English speaking world.

I don’t agree with your interpretation of ‘random’ as it relates to breath testing, but I’m perfectly comfortable with that.

I have absolutely no problem with breath testing for the record, however I have a MASSIVE problem with where they setup the testing places. It was not long ago that they set up a testing area on Erindale Drive (near the large roundabout) working to pick up traffic coming from Woden to Tuggeranong. You go round the corner, and “no way to get away” is probably the thought some wise-arse had at the station.
Well, that’s fine – except for one thing. It’s a great way to A: test the brakes of people coming down Yamba Drive towards Tuggeranong (on the downside of the hill) and B: how to get a police officer killed in the line of duty.’
I got pulled by this setup, after having to emergency brake and gave the officer who came up to me a massive earful. Mostly he acted all high & mighty, until I pointed out a couple of factors, 1. if someone is doing 80Km/h down that hill, what is the stopping distance they have if they come round the corner, and the police setup about 25 – 50 metres beyond. 2. I believe Occupational Health & Safety would have a conniption fit if they saw that (along with the Police Union.)
It was the dumbest place to put a RBT I have ever seen, and told the guy that. Said to him that if he moved about another 100m down the road, he could get traffic coming off Sulwood Dr. and still be safer than where they were.

So, moral of the story, Cops aren’t always right, and most certainly it would be nice to meet a cop that was actually teachable/listening to people around them, rather than thinking he was the best thing since AIR was invented… (LOL)
Note: they didn’t follow my advice, thus a number of vehicles were doing emergency braking and nearly killing themselves on that corner, but the cops did clear out soon after… about 30 mins later they were gone.

devils_advocate said :

p1 said :

I think that the police should do more of this type of testing. The only time I have ever objected was when they were set up on Belconnen Way at 8:15am on a weekday, between Aranda and Cook. The traffic was backed up to Kippax…. But even that was probably worth it from a “visibility of policing” stand point – just so long as they don’t do it too often.

This is to catch people who are still “over” from the night before, and from what I hear does a lot of business (judging from a small sample from ACT magistrate’s court). I’m not 100% sold on whether these types of tests (i.e. testing hangover-edness rather than actual drunkenness) is genuine enforcement or cynical trapping, as being hungover is not really the same as being drunk (although I never drive in either condition).

I have nothing against them stopping people in the morning – my issue was one of the benefit of this police work vrs the fact they pissed off half the commuters in Belco.

…and if you still have the alcohol in your blood the next morning, you are still drunk. And in addition to that, you are now tired (you body doesn’t rest very well while trying to sober up), and probably dehydrated. None of those things make you any safer on the road.

p1 said :

I think that the police should do more of this type of testing. The only time I have ever objected was when they were set up on Belconnen Way at 8:15am on a weekday, between Aranda and Cook. The traffic was backed up to Kippax…. But even that was probably worth it from a “visibility of policing” stand point – just so long as they don’t do it too often.

This is to catch people who are still “over” from the night before, and from what I hear does a lot of business (judging from a small sample from ACT magistrate’s court). I’m not 100% sold on whether these types of tests (i.e. testing hangover-edness rather than actual drunkenness) is genuine enforcement or cynical trapping, as being hungover is not really the same as being drunk (although I never drive in either condition).

Alderney said :

thatsnotme said :

So how do you think a random test should work?

I would have thought use of the word, ‘random’ would be the give away here. Everyone was tested, nothing ‘random’ at all.

Grats on obviously not even bothering to read my entire post. As I said initially, “The random nature of the breath test is self selecting here. The Police don’t know who will be driving along the road at the time they set up for testing, so the drivers breath tested will be a random selection of people.”

So this test was completely random. If you’d driven down Parkes Way, you wouldn’t have been tested. If you were on Barry Drive, you wouldn’t have been tested. The fact you and the family were driving down Lady Denman, at the same time as the Police had set up for breath testing, is a random set of circumstances. The fact that everybody was tested takes nothing away from the random nature of the testing. If, however, the Police didn’t stop everyone, it would no longer be random, because the Police would be choosing who to pull over and who to let pass.

But hey, if you want to label me a tool because you suck at reading comprehension, then go right ahead.

As usual, Wiki has all the answers:

Logical determinism or Determinateness is the notion that all propositions, whether about the past, present, or future, are either true or false. Note that one can support Causal Determinism without necessarily supporting Logical Determinism and vice versa (depending on one’s views on the nature of time, but also randomness). The problem of free will is especially salient now with Logical Determinism: how can choices be free, given that propositions about the future already have a truth value in the present (i.e. it is already determined as either true or false)? This is referred to as the problem of future contingents.

Adequate determinism focuses on the fact that, even without a full understanding of microscopic physics, we can predict the distribution of 1000 coin tosses. Often synonymous with Logical Determinism are the ideas behind Spatio-temporal Determinism or Eternalism: the view of special relativity. J. J. C. Smart, a proponent of this view, uses the term “tenselessness” to describe the simultaneous existence of past, present, and future. In physics, the “block universe” of Hermann Minkowski and Albert Einstein assumes that time is a fourth dimension (like the three spatial dimensions). In other words, all the other parts of time are real, like the city blocks up and down a street, although the order in which they appear depends on the driver (see Rietdijk–Putnam argument).

“However, apart from a lack of any ‘randomness’ in the testing of drivers, there appeared to be no-one policing any vehicles that might have come around the bend, seen the bank-up of cars with a police van advertising a ‘random’ breath test, and done a u-turn, as any drink impaired driver with a modicum of nous would have done.”

The AFP’s Hellfire-armed MQ-9 Reaper deals with those people…………

How is this difficult to assess?
Because there is no testing on all drivers at all times in all location, anything else is has a degree of randomness about it.

I’ve also seen police give chase to vehicles who took obvious action to avoid the chance of being tested.

Alderney said :

thatsnotme said :

So how do you think a random test should work?

I would have thought use of the word, ‘random’ would be the give away here. Everyone was tested, nothing ‘random’ at all.

Felix the Cat said :

…as long as the pissheads are taken off the road.

Agreed, I think I even said so in the OP.

niftydog said :

I don’t understand why this bothers you.

I’m sorry, did I say it bothered me? Oh that’s right. I forgot about the bit that you know what’s going on in my head more than I do. My apologies.

I’ll leave you with this one. Do philosophers have a problem with things or do they just question, test and theorise?

niftydog said :

Whether they pull up three cars at a time or every single car going down the street has no impact on the randomness of the test.

You obviously have a diferent understanding of the word ‘random’ than the rest of the English speaking world.

MrLinus said :

The time and place they were doing the testing may have been random, it doesn’t have to be which cars are randomly selected from the traffic.

You know, this actually makes sense. Thank you MrLinus for providing another perspective.

Erg0 said :

“Random” is really just a marketing term, intended to give the impression that you could be tested at any time or place. I very much doubt that they decide RBT placement by blindfolding a junior officer and having him throw darts at a map.

I guess even the police aren’t immune to marketing. I’ll leave the sillyness of your second sentence where you left it, except to say there is quite possibly something amiss with the connections in your brain if you read that into my post.

bigfeet said :

Police set up on a stretch of road-they pull over some cars and test them- while they are doing this some cars drive past and are not tested.

Seriously. How much more ‘random’ could it be?

Maybe you should read the bit about me saying everyone was pulled over. Not random.

davo101 said :

The ACT doesn’t have random breath testing. Other jurisdictions, such as NSW, use the term “random breath testing” in their legislation but the ACT doesn’t.

Thanks for that davo, I too read the regs and noticed the absence in use of the actual term. The question then becomes, why do they use it? Surely they could just display breath testing ahead on their roof-top message board instead.

Thanks to the one’s for the decent comments.

In fact, thanks for the not decent one’s too. Let’s me know who the tools are.

Some of you even managed to straddle both sides of the fence. You know that you’ll get splinters in your arse if you stay there too long don’t you.

Not if I’m sitting on a colourbond fence…

If they want to set up in at the exit of a pub’s car park and test everyone as they leave then that’s just fine and dandy.

And they do do this in the lane in and out of the carpark outside Mooseheads. Nothing random about this – it is based on the ‘bang for your buck’ theory I believe.

Breath Testing Randoms?

thatsnotme said :

So how do you think a random test should work?

I would have thought use of the word, ‘random’ would be the give away here. Everyone was tested, nothing ‘random’ at all.

Felix the Cat said :

…as long as the pissheads are taken off the road.

Agreed, I think I even said so in the OP.

niftydog said :

I don’t understand why this bothers you.

I’m sorry, did I say it bothered me? Oh that’s right. I forgot about the bit that you know what’s going on in my head more than I do. My apologies.

I’ll leave you with this one. Do philosophers have a problem with things or do they just question, test and theorise?

niftydog said :

Whether they pull up three cars at a time or every single car going down the street has no impact on the randomness of the test.

You obviously have a diferent understanding of the word ‘random’ than the rest of the English speaking world.

MrLinus said :

The time and place they were doing the testing may have been random, it doesn’t have to be which cars are randomly selected from the traffic.

You know, this actually makes sense. Thank you MrLinus for providing another perspective.

Erg0 said :

“Random” is really just a marketing term, intended to give the impression that you could be tested at any time or place. I very much doubt that they decide RBT placement by blindfolding a junior officer and having him throw darts at a map.

I guess even the police aren’t immune to marketing. I’ll leave the sillyness of your second sentence where you left it, except to say there is quite possibly something amiss with the connections in your brain if you read that into my post.

bigfeet said :

Police set up on a stretch of road-they pull over some cars and test them- while they are doing this some cars drive past and are not tested.

Seriously. How much more ‘random’ could it be?

Maybe you should read the bit about me saying everyone was pulled over. Not random.

davo101 said :

The ACT doesn’t have random breath testing. Other jurisdictions, such as NSW, use the term “random breath testing” in their legislation but the ACT doesn’t.

Thanks for that davo, I too read the regs and noticed the absence in use of the actual term. The question then becomes, why do they use it? Surely they could just display breath testing ahead on their roof-top message board instead.

Thanks to the one’s for the decent comments.

In fact, thanks for the not decent one’s too. Let’s me know who the tools are.

Some of you even managed to straddle both sides of the fence. You know that you’ll get splinters in your arse if you stay there too long don’t you.

The ACT doesn’t have random breath testing. Other jurisdictions, such as NSW, use the term “random breath testing” in their legislation but the ACT doesn’t. If they want to set up in at the exit of a pub’s car park and test everyone as they leave then that’s just fine and dandy.

Police set up on a stretch of road-they pull over some cars and test them- while they are doing this some cars drive past and are not tested.

Seriously. How much more ‘random’ could it be?

I think that the police should do more of this type of testing. The only time I have ever objected was when they were set up on Belconnen Way at 8:15am on a weekday, between Aranda and Cook. The traffic was backed up to Kippax…. But even that was probably worth it from a “visibility of policing” stand point – just so long as they don’t do it too often.

“Random” is really just a marketing term, intended to give the impression that you could be tested at any time or place. I very much doubt that they decide RBT placement by blindfolding a junior officer and having him throw darts at a map.

Logically, they aren’t totally random.
Police target resources to the occasion, traffic volume, and probability of offenders within a batch of traffic (as evidenced by the fact there are very few RBT operations set up along Paddy’s River Road at 3am midwinter, but on warm long weekends with public gatherings seeing one on the off-arterial roads leading away from the gathering is almost a certainty…)

However all individual vehicles on the road during a scheduled RBT operation, there is a nonzero chance of being selected for a breathalyser event in excess of the usual chance of breath testing if you’re driving eratically.
The chance is heightened for vehicles driving along a stretch of road which hosts a stationary roadside RBT, and once the instantaneous traffic volume exceeds the capacity of the roadside RBT unit then not every car can be selected.
Under those circumstances, some groups or individuals may have higher chances of selection than others, but its up to the bias of officers on the ground to choose who does or does not get selected.

But once they pull you over, if you’re clearly doing something else which is a crime, or the officer has reasonable suspicion of crime, I suspect the officer can investigate further (hence your other driver being delayed, I guess).

How did you think they worked?

One of the favourite tactics by NSW police is to set up the RBT about 20 or so meters after a small turn off – a police car then waits at the turn off and breath tests any cars that come that way.

The time and place they were doing the testing may have been random, it doesn’t have to be which cars are randomly selected from the traffic.

Just because you didn’t see a police car watching for people doing a u-turn doesn’t mean they weren’t there.

I don’t understand why this bothers you. Whether they pull up three cars at a time or every single car going down the street has no impact on the randomness of the test.

I saw a similar RBT setup on the Barton Highway just before the turn-off to Ellenborough St on Saturday morning I think it was.

Who cares if it is “random” or not, as long as the pissheads are taken off the road.

When you’re a p plater uh huh huh huh

The random nature of the breath test is self selecting here. The Police don’t know who will be driving along the road at the time they set up for testing, so the drivers breath tested will be a random selection of people.

Now if the Police pick and choose who they will and won’t test, it’s not so random any more is it? You could bet that young drivers / single male drivers / people driving old cars would be tested, and those who were let go would be older drivers / cars with mum, dad and the kids, etc.

So how do you think a random test should work?