Oral fluid testing for impaired driving enforcement gains traction
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iStock.com/aijohn784 In recent years, the United States has made progress in reducing highway deaths through safer vehicles, roadway engineering, enhanced medical response and data-driven enforcement tactics. However, crashes involving drug-impaired drivers continue to rise throughout the country. In 2016, 44% of fatally injured drivers with known results tested positive for drugs, up from 28% just 10 years prior, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. A 2020 study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration illustrated the prevalence of injury and fatal crashes from hospital and medical examiner data in five metropolitan areas on the East Coast. Data collected both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic exposed a significant increase of impairing substances, especially in alcohol, cannabis and opioids. This growing problem requires new strategies to be implemented to help turn this disturbing trend around and save countless lives. We can no longer continue to carry out many of the same traditional approaches and expect different outcomes in the future. However, technology exists today for reliable roadside drug detection for drivers that can help change the course and deter many from getting behind the wheel after consuming impairing substances that can affect their ability to operate a motor vehicle safely. Oral fluid (saliva) drug-testing technology is available now and is currently being used throughout the world, including Spain, Canada, Germany and in some U.S. states, including in California, Wisconsin and Alabama. Several available instruments have demonstrated good efficacy and can screen for several common drugs of abuse. The Michigan State Police recently completed its second pilot phase using the SoToxa Mobile Test System made by the health-care company Abbott, which showed accuracy rates between 87%–96% when compared to oral fluid confirmation samples. Indiana is also in the early stages of a pilot program, which it is rolling out to several agencies across the state. Several other states across the country include roadside drug testing as a strategy in their respective strategic highway safety plans, including Colorado, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Why oral fluid testing? Many law enforcement agencies deploy drug recognition experts (DRE) who have specialized training to recognize impairment in drivers under the influence of drugs other than, or in addition to, alcohol. DREs represent only about 2% of all law enforcement officers in the U.S. Even with more officers being trained in Advanced Roadside Impaired Driving Enforcement (ARIDE), we are still missing too many impaired drivers on our roadways. Oral fluid testing can help detect the presence of a drug(s) when officers observe articulable facts and circumstances of impairment, which include sobriety tests and other general indicators. However, many of these signs can be dismissed due to admissions of medical problems, sleep deprivation or inexperience. This is where roadside testing can add probable cause — to determine that the impairment is substance driven and allow officers to have the operator further evaluated by certified DREs. This will only increase the demand to have DREs involved and help determine what is causing the impairment and what category(s) of drugs may be involved. Think of a case where a driver has caused serious injury or death to another and may be injured themselves. Due to the circumstances, there might be the inability to conduct field sobriety tests and make limited observations but have some reasonable suspicions. A roadside test may be the probable cause to continue in obtaining an evidentiary test and continue the investigation, because the window of opportunity is short to be able to obtain an evidentiary test later. And we cannot overstate the potential impact on deterring drug-impaired drivers from getting behind the wheel in the first place, if they know that law enforcement has the ability to drug test at roadside. This worked well for reducing alcohol-impaired driving with preliminary breath testing instruments utilized at roadside, starting in the 1990s. Some key benefits to a roadside drug-testing instrument:
- Portability for mobile deployment from almost any type of vehicle
- Easy to use and rapid results within minutes
- Minimally invasive (much more like a breath test)
- Cut off levels are set to detect recent ingestion of drugs
- Stored memory and users have the option to print the results at roadside