ROADSIDE DRUGS TESTS 'COULD BE FLAWED' SAY RESEARCHERS

ROADSIDE tests that are the only way of catching people driving under the
influence of drugs may be fatally flawed, it was revealed last night.

Research in Glasgow has cast doubt on the mental and physical tasks that
police have been using for three years to try to crack down on what is
feared to be an epidemic of drug driving.

The problem could put traffic officers, who admit the tests are "not
scientific" compared with breathalysers, back to square one in the search
for an effective way of finding grounds to arrest and charge a drug-driving
suspect.

Dr Paul Skett, a senior lecturer is pharmacology at Glasgow University and
one of the main expert witnesses in drug driving court cases, has been
assessing the Fitness Impairment Tests imported to Scotland from the US in
2001.

In the absence of any drug equivalent of the alcohol breathalyser, they
were thought to be the best way of giving officers grounds to arrest and
charge a driver driving erratically who was thought to be under the
influence but whose breathalyser result proved negative.

The tests include a series of physical and mental tasks, such as balancing
on one leg while counting, walking heel to toe along a straight line and
touching the tip of the nose with a finger.

Skett said early results of research at Glasgow were "worrying", however,
because volunteers with no drugs in their system have been testing positive
after carrying out the tasks, sometimes simply because they are tired.

In another case a driver taken to a police station after failing the tests
turned out to have had a mild stroke.

Skett said there "may or may not" be any scientific basis for the tests,
which he said had been copied from the US without analysis of their
efficacy. "I think the legislation will have to be tightened up."

Even when a test leads to an arrest and analysis of a blood sample there is
disagreement on what concentration of a particular drug would impair
driving ability. Skett is advising on two cases a month which are being
disputed in court and said he believed accused drivers were being acquitted
as a result.

Meanwhile motorists are under no obligation to take the tests in the first
place, and can refuse.

Skett said: "I think these tests have just been taken on trust because they
were being used in California. We are looking to see if there is a
scientifically valid basis for the tests. There may or may not be one.

"So far the results have been fairly worrying. We are finding that people
who are tired cant do the tests, for example.

"No one has done research on how much of a drug is enough to impair driving."

Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP's justice spokeswoman, said: "Drug driving is
extremely serious and I would hope any test being carried out is credible
and reliable. If there are doubts it will need to be looked at because
whatever test is used people have to have confidence in it."

Inspector Paul Fleming, of Strathclyde Polices road unit, said: "It's still
a subjective decision by an officer. It's not scientific like the
drink-driving test where you either get a pass or fail on a machine. People
will fail the tests if they are tired."

But he defended the system as a good way of screening drivers and said it
had a high "hit rate" in terms of the proportion of motorists arrested who
then give a blood sample that tests positive for drugs.

Fleming added: "Before the new tests there was an 80% to 84% hit rate.
Since the tests were introduced that has gone up to 95%-96%."

He said anyone wrongly arrested at the roadside because they were tired or
ill should in theory be identified by a police surgeon at the police
station, avoiding a wrongful charge.

Dr John Oliver, a forensic medical scientist at Glasgow University who
tests blood samples from drivers who have failed Field Impairment Tests,
said the fact that there could be "false positives" did not matter.

"I don't have the concerns that others have because I'm seeing what the
police are seeing, which is that the tests are screening out a lot of
time-wasting in the laboratory," he said.

Oliver was involved in the DoT's Glasgow study, which is understood to have
looked at the test results of 200-300 drivers in the two years to July last
year, but its details are currently confidential.

The only evidence police are prepared to release from the report which went
to the Department of Transport is the 95%-96% figure. Even that means that
four in 1,000 people are being wrongly charged with driving under the
influence.

A spokesman for the Department of Transport said: "We will give close and
careful consideration to the findings of the report."