The drink-drive procedures, introduced to Great Britain in 1967, consist of a series of options selected by either the subject or the administering police officer. The intricacies of the procedure proved to be an obstacle course for some inexperienced police officers, with the result that, on occasions, offenders have gone free on non-analytical technicalities, even though their alcohol levels were well above the legal limit. To help solve this problem, in early 1990 Sound Techniques Limited (STL), with the assistance of the Wiltshire Police, designed a computerised system which was introduced to Swindon Police Station. The system proved to be successful, both in legal and practical terms. Between July 07, 1990 and January 20, 1995, 3726 drink-drive procedures were carried out at Swindon Police station, none of which have been contested in Court due to the computerisation of the manual pro-forma. The new system now written to the English national drink-drive forms, and known as LIBIS - Lion Intoxilyzer 6000 Breath-testing Input System, has been designed to deal with any circumstances, however, complex, and produce a set of appropriate documents ready for signature. LIBIS links to the new Lion Intoxilyzer 6000 Evidential breath-testing machine and exchanges all relevant information required by both systems, thus minimising data input, speeding up the procedure, and eliminating errors in procedure. (A)
Abstract