September 2009

Autowatch TAB, a tethered alcohol breathalyser based immobiliser (Alcolock) that prevents the drivers of trucks, buses and taxis from driving their vehicles while over the legally allowed alcohol limit is now available in South Africa.

Durban based PFK Electronics say the fitting of alcohol breathalyser based immobilisers is becoming a legal requirement for commercial and public transport in many European countries.

What happens is that, when the driver wants to use his or her vehicle, the unit requests the driver to provide a breath sample when entering the vehicle and if either a sample is not given or the alcohol level is over the required limit the vehicle will not start.

The actual breath alcohol content, time, date and so on is stored in the unit and can be retrieved by the fleet manager or can even be relayed, via GSM, to a control centre or cell phone.

The PFK Autowatch Alcolock System has anticircumvention technology built into the unit to ensure it is an actual human breath sample it is analysing. It even measures the actual humidity and temperature of the breath sample and it measures the air flow and volume to ensure the person is blowing not sucking.

The system can protect the driver as all data is stored in a non-volatile memory so, should there be an accident, it can be retrieved and serve as a record of the driver’s actual alcohol level preceding the accident.

PFK, which has been exporting Alcolocks for over four years, says it has found that having an Alcolock installed drastically changes driver behaviour. Drivers do not want their superiors to know that they drink, even on occasion, so they would either not drink at all and definitely not attempt to give a sample (to start the vehicle) after consuming alcohol because the result will go onto their personal record. So they elect not to drink anything if they know they have to drive or not drive at all if they have consumed alcohol.

PFK is a major exporter of Alcolocks to countries such as Sweden, UK, Denmark, France and Netherlands.