Alcohol or drug addiction affects 23.2 million Americans (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, www.niaaa.nih.gov). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rank alcohol as the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States.
Due in part to increased penalties for drunk driving, raising the legal drinking age and less tolerance for excessive drinking in general, alcohol abuse, as measured by traffic fatalities and teenage drinking, has decreased.
For example, the proportion of high school seniors who have ever consumed alcohol was down from 93.2% in 1980 to 76.6% in 2003 (Johnston, L. D., O'Malley, P. M., Bachman, J. G. and Schulenberg, J. E. Monitoring the Future national Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975-2006. Volume I, Secondary School Students. Bethesda, MD: National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2007. 669 pages. (NIH Publication No. 07-6205) Table 5.).
There are encouraging signs on the road as well. According to the 2006 Traffic Safety Facts Annual Report, the percentage of drivers with BAC of .08+ involved in fatal crashes was 22% in 2006 which was relatively unchanged from 2005 and down from roughly 29% in 2000. However, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Nearly 1.5 million individuals each year are arrested for driving while intoxicated. Around 1/3 or 500,000 of those drivers had a previous offense for alcohol impaired driving.
The iSECUREtrac Solution
iSECUREtrac provides both the MEMS 2000 in-home breath alcohol testing system. The system integrates visual client verification with in-home alcohol testing for conclusive and court admissible evidence of release compliance. An onboard camera utilizes infrared LED to enable accurate participant identification even in near darkness. In-home alcohol testing systems available from iSECUREtrac system detect breath alcohol levels within +/- 0.005% accuracy of actual blood alcohol levels.
When used in conjunction with other iSECUREtrac electronic monitoring systems (e.g., Active GPS, Passive GPS or House Arrest), in-home alcohol testing has proven to be an effective means to monitor release compliance and shape more socially responsible behavior.
For more information or to request an on-site demo of iSECUREtrac systems, services and software, email or call toll-free at 866.537.0022.