By Have you ever thought of a radar equipment that would detect drunken drivers? There are great chances that you haven’t. Well, the Russians have had and thus they have come up with Alkolaser. What is this? Exactly what we’ve said in the first sentence: a radar that detects drunken drivers.
The Alkolaser radar was developed at Laser Systems Company in St. Petersburg. Its main functionality is to detect drunken drivers at distance. How efficient is this system? Well, that’s surely a topic of great debate.
Alkolaser was unveiled at the “Interpolitex-2010”, an event that will took place between 26th and 29th of October. This is the first equipment of this kind. There’s nothing similar in the world. In this matter, Vladimir Chernov has stated that:
“The possibility of developing such equipment appeared three years ago when our experts achieved promising results. We developed an experimental model, which is being tested now. We hope good results will help us to develop it to meet the demands of the traffic police that assure safety on roads. The equipment will help to determine on-line whether there is alcohol vapour inside a moving vehicle. “
You may wonder how this thing works. Well, it works like other radar equipments. The difference is that this one detects if there are any vapours from 100 milimetres of Vodka or from 300 milimetres of beer. Alkolaser uses a laser that is directed at the vehicle. This is the one that determines whether there are any alcohol vapours or not in the car.
If Alkolaser does find alcohol vapours, then details related to that vehicle will be send to the closest control traffic unit. Further on, this unit should check and see whether the driver has had a drink or not.
Alkolaser weighs 10 kilograms and will come in two models. One of them, the stationary one, will be placed above the roads whereas the other one, the portable model, will be installed on a tripod and a traffic officer will control it.
Now you may wonder what happens if somebody has washed the car screen and there are vapours similar to alcohol in the car. Well, the developers of Alkolaser claim that the laser ray is directed at alcohol vapors that come from a person and that the equipment detects only what’s inside the car. It will not respond to vapour coming from other liquids that contain alcohol like as we said screen wash liquids. What if there’s somebody else (besides the driver) in the car and that person has had a drink ?
The equipment works only if the windows of the vehicle are closed as well as the air conditioner. The car speed should be under 120km/h and the distance between the car and Alkolaser should be of 20 metres.
The use of Alkolaser might lead to traffic jams as Moscow Motorist Union says. The Alkolaser developer, Laser Systems Company, plans to end the tests by the end of 2011. After that, if Alkolaser is approved, production on large scale will begin and the equipment will then be used by Russia’s traffic police.