Every day in the United States, about 34 people die in drunk-driving crashes—one life lost every 42 minutes. In 2023 alone, 12,429 people died in alcohol-impaired driving traffic accidents. These tragedies are preventable, and a cornerstone of prevention lies in ensuring that alcohol test devices used by law enforcement and transportation agencies are reliable, precise, and legally defensible.

The U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s Alcohol Countermeasures Laboratory serves this critical safety mission for NHTSA’s Impaired Driving Division.

Supporting NHTSA’s Mission

The Alcohol Countermeasures Laboratory evaluates evidential breath testing devices (EBT), alcohol screening devices, and calibration units used across police, aviation, rail, marine, and other transportation modes. Under NHTSA Model Specifications (Federal Register 58 48705-48710), devices must meet stringent precision and accuracy requirements before appearing on NHTSA’s Conforming Products Lists (CPL). The U.S. DOT Volpe Center is the sole laboratory designated to conduct all required testing, and its work directly supports NHTSA’s goal of reducing drunk-driving fatalities.

The U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s mission begins by subjecting submitted instruments to rigorous evaluation. Ninety to ninety-five percent of devices initially fail to conform, prompting close collaboration with manufacturers on hardware or software improvements. Only after repeated testing confirms compliance are devices approved. This process protects end users—police officers, airline pilots, train engineers, and commercial drivers—and ensures that readings reflect true breath-alcohol concentrations.

A defining capability of the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s Alcohol Countermeasures Laboratory is its unique Breath Alcohol Sample Simulator (BASS). These U.S. DOT Volpe Center-designed and built robots are the only wet-bath “drinking” robots in the world, faithfully reproducing the water vapor, temperature, and breath profiles of human breath. Most other laboratories rely on compressed gas simulators that cannot replicate human physiology. BASS units are used for critical breath-sampling tests and help validate that instruments perform accurately under realistic conditions.

The Crucial Role of Scientific Integrity

The U.S. DOT Volpe Center team also provides expert testimony in federal and state courts, defending the scientific integrity of breath testing devices and maintaining public confidence in the criminal justice process. In challenges regarding software or procedural updates, U.S. DOT Volpe Center scientists demonstrate that modifications have no adverse impact on precision or accuracy. The laboratory has not lost a case in its history, and judges rely on the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s independent findings when weighing expert evidence.

Recent milestones include special testing of the Dräger Alcotest 9510 for New Jersey and the CMI Intoxilyzer 9000 for Florida. In both cases, defendants argued that user-software updates disqualified the devices from NHTSA’s CPLs. The U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s exhaustive evaluations—performed under state-specific protocols—confirmed that neither software nor procedural changes affected the instruments’ performance. U.S. DOT Volpe Center staff have provided testimony in New Jersey’s Supreme Court and Florida trial courts and stand ready to do so again.

Beyond device evaluation and litigation support, the Alcohol Countermeasures Laboratory advises NHTSA on model specification updates and participates in the International Organization of Legal Metrology (OIML) working group to develop global recommendations for evidential breath testers. The laboratory continuously monitors conforming devices, retesting them after any modification to ensure ongoing compliance.

By combining advanced engineering, data analysis, legal expertise, and innovative robotics, the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s Alcohol Countermeasures Laboratory safeguards the accuracy and reliability of breath-alcohol testing devices. Its work plays a vital role in deterring impaired driving and upholding the rule of law—ultimately saving lives and reinforcing public trust in transportation safety.

About the U.S. DOT Volpe Center

Since 1970, the U.S. DOT Volpe Center has advanced transportation innovation for the public good, providing multimodal applied research, collaborating with federal, state, and industry partners, and multidisciplinary technical leadership and expertise to solve complex transportation challenges. Learn more at www.volpe.dot.gov.