Work Package 3 - Enforcement
Work Package-leader: René Mathijssen, SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research, Netherlands
The objective of this work package is to conduct a large scale scientific and practical evaluation of on-site screening for impairing psychoactive substances other than alcohol in drivers. The focus will be on illegal drugs and medicines. The results should improve the possibilities of detecting drug driving in Europe and provide a solid basis for harmonising the European police requirements for on-site drug screening. Besides a practical evaluation of on-site screening devices, also a scientific evaluation and a cost-benefit analysis will be carried out.
Practical evaluation
The practical evaluation of the screening devices will be directed to functional and user requirements. Test criteria will comprise aspects like the willingness of drivers to co-operate, duration of the test, user friendliness and material costs. The limitations of police operations are given by the legal framework provided by the various national Road Traffic Acts. Therefore, legal and formal limitations have to be considered as well.
On-site screening devices will be tested according to a fixed protocol by the police forces in eight countries under operation field conditions. All subjects are suspected of driving while being impaired by psychoactive substances other than alcohol. The suspects' rights must be respected during the investigation. For this reason the investigation will always take place in a "suspect-police setting" where no other persons can be present. Since the use of on-site screening devices for psychoactive substances is currently not part of the legal procedure in most of the participating member countries, all tests have to be performed on a voluntary base.
The selection of screening devices that will be included in this study will be based on the results of the EU ROSITA II project. Apart from this, there will also be a possibility to include promising new devices.
Each selected manufacturer of on-site screening devices will be invited to participate in this evaluation by providing information and devices to be tested. The operational testing will be carried out during nine test periods of four weeks each.
All findings will be documented and at the end of the testing periods 200 tests with each device have been performed and evaluated. The results can be used as an input for successful legislative activities in the EU member states and other countries. The outcomes will also be used as input for the cost-benefit analysis.
Scientific evaluation
The scientific evaluation of the screening devices will be imbedded in a screening method. The evaluation will contain aspects of reliability and accuracy. For this purpose, all screening tests will be linked to a blood or saliva sample that will be used for confirmation analysis.
Since the police will normally only perform on-site analytical drug screening when a driver is suspected of being drug-impaired, a set of pre-selection criteria is needed. In this study checklists will be used as pre-selection method.
The scientific evaluation will be carried out together with roadside surveys of randomly selected drivers in the Netherlands, Belgium and Finland. From these drivers only drivers with self-reported recent psychoactive substance use other than alcohol or drivers who are otherwise suspected based on the results of the checklist, will be selected to enter the scientific evaluation.
In principle, the scientific evaluation will comprise the same devices that will be included in the practical evaluation.
The outcome of the task will be recommendations for roadside selection procedures of drivers suspected of driving while impaired by psychoactive substances. These recommendations will be mainly based on the reliability of the method.
Cost-benefit analysis
The outcome of both the practical and scientific evaluation will serve as input to cost-benefit analysis of drug-driving enforcement by the police. Furthermore, the cost-benefit analysis will calculate which on-site screening device will have the best cost-benefit rate.
The cost-benefit analyses will be carried out according to standard methods taking into account the costs of for example accidents, fatalities, injuries and material damage, the effects of enforcement, the cost of police and road user time, the cost of vehicles, fuel devices and equipment, of laboratory analysis and the costs of the judicial system.
Some of this data is already available from studies and European projects like UNITE and ROSEBUD. However, to perform solid cost-benefit analyses on enforcement of driving under the influence of psychoactive substances, more data is needed and existing calculations need to be adjusted.