The more frequently you drink, the greater the risk you have for eventually getting into legal trouble, especially if you often drive yourself home after having a few drinks. If alcohol plays an important role in your social life, you may have already taken steps to help yourself avoid dangerous mistakes, like getting behind the wheel after a few too many drinks.
Avoiding impaired driving is a smart choice, but doing so safely isn’t as easy as you might hope. Whether you always use the public breath test at your favorite watering hole or you have purchased a personal breath test that you can carry with you, you might rely on that test, only to wind up getting pulled over and arrested for impaired driving anyway.
Breath tests can make mistakes, especially without proper maintenance
Chemical breath testing is a complex process, and the machinery that performs the test may require calibration and frequent maintenance in order to produce accurate results. A personal device you use or one available for public use in a bar could give you an inaccurate reading and put you in legal danger.
Routine maintenance, software updates, and even testing the unit for accuracy could all be necessary to get a good reading from a breath test, especially if you have used it multiple times. There have been cases of people who passed a personal breath test, only to shortly thereafter get pulled over by police and fail a breath test. In other words, paying attention to your drinks and how you feel may be a safer bet than just relying on a test to ensure that you are sober enough to drive.