Brazil's national traffic council, Contran, approved new enforcement rules for the country's drink-driving law on Monday. They update procedures that have been in place since 2013, and they change how a roadside stop works rather than what is punished.
The stop gains a screening step at the front. Officers will be able to use pre-test or passive alcohol equipment to look for a sign that alcohol is present. That first result cannot on its own produce a fine or establish that someone was driving under the influence — a positive screen sends the driver on to the formal procedure.
The rules also cover a retest of the breathalyser where something in the driver's mouth could have distorted the reading. Folha lists what the regulation has in mind: liqueur chocolates, mouthwash, and sliced bread.
Testing for drugs is the other half. Certified equipment may now be used to identify other psychoactive substances, and the result is qualitative — it can say which substance was detected but not how much is in the body. Traces alone are not enough to establish the offence. Officers have to weigh other evidence as well, and must record at least two observed signs that the driver's psychomotor capacity was altered. Where a crash has killed someone, testing the drivers involved for alcohol or other psychoactive substances becomes compulsory.
None of it starts at the roadside immediately. The devices and procedures have to be certified first, so a driver stopped today will not meet the new checks. The resolution takes effect when it is published in the official gazette, which was expected on Tuesday, and the changes to enforcement forms and to the codes used to classify offences have sixty days before they apply — time for the traffic authorities to adapt their systems. g1 notes that the measure creates no new offence and does not alter the penalties set out in Brazil's traffic code.
Why it is on the board
This is the first Brazilian story to reach this board on two reading lists. It was fifth on g1's most-read and eighth on Folha's when we collected — and until this morning we could only see g1, so a story like this would have needed to be near the very top of that single list to qualify at all. We added the Folha list today.
확인: g1 · Folha de S.Paulo