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DUI

A California company, Acunetx, has developed a tool to help Police Officers track down DUIs.

It’s called Hawkeye and it is functionally an infrared recording device. The principal is that when you are under the influence, one of the tell tale signs is involuntary eye movement. This feature is independent of alcohol tolerance and so is widely used by police to help judge whether someone is intoxicated.

Hawkeye makes it easier for officers to see and more importantly record this behavior for use as evidence.

That’s the idea at least.


Hawkeye Was An Avenger

As it stands, the device is only being used in police station for training purposes and at a select few checkpoints. It has never been taken into courts. Like many new technologies, since there isn’t a strong precedence for its use — many judges would not admit Hawkeye’s recordings.

The major disadvantage of this technology and another reason why it’s still on the shelf is context. Hawkeye recordings do nothing to show how the sobriety tests were conducted. If the officer failed to give a correct examination, it could wildly skew the results — invalidating the data. Also, in some ways it’s technology for it’s own sake as Hawkeye is not a replacement for traditional blood and a breathalyser tests.

A few Counties in California are testing Hawkeye’s effectiveness in the field.

Unfortunately for them, they still haven’t had an opportunity to bring it to court because everyone they test it on keeps pleading guilty.

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