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Thai police may now take urine or blood samples to test the blood alcohol levels of drivers who refuse to blow into breathalyser devices, under a new regulation.
The announcement was published in the Royal Gazette on Friday. It replaced two ministerial regulations issued in 1994 and 2017, which focused on the use of breathalysers as the main method for testing for drunk drivers.
The new regulation aims to make the alcohol testing processes more suited for today’s situation while improving the effectiveness of legal applications to prevent cases of drunk driving. It is unclear how many more drivers the change is likely to net.
The regulation allows police to collect the urine samples of suspected drunk drivers or send them to hospital for blood tests if they refuse to take a breathalyser test.
For the urine test, police officers are instructed to seek the driver’s consent before conducting the test.
They are instructed to give drivers a secure location to urinate in a sealable container.
Officers will maintain control over a gathering area to prevent drivers from exchanging samples.
The urine samples are required to be sent to a nearby hospital for a laboratory test.
For the blood test, the regulation instructs police to bring the driver to a nearby hospital for a medical test.
Drivers with more than 50 milligrammes of alcohol, or 20mg for those under 20 years old, in their bodies are considered intoxicated and will be charged with drunk driving, according to the regulation.
The law also says that it shall be assumed that a driver who refuses to be examined by a doctor without good reason has a blood alcohol level exceeding the legal limit.
The doctor at the hospital shall record the refusal and notify the police to proceed with an investigation of the case.
The previous government on Jan 30 approved an amendment to the Land Transportation Act to allow alcohol level tests on drivers within three hours of being stopped by the police.
At the time, Karom Polpornklang, who was then-deputy spokesman for the government, said the amended law would help expand the ways to identify drunk drivers beyond the use of breathalysers.