In my area, police cannot stop drivers for ANY reason other than probable cause that a crime (or at least traffic infraction) has been committed by someone. And in the case of alcohol, the driver must be that someone.
Alcohol vapor that MIGHT HAVE been coming from ONE OF the people in the car does not even come close to probable cause. A police department that tried this would be in serious trouble, very quickly.

Seems like a Big Brother kind of thing.

Better not use an alcohol based window cleaner then... This is idiotic!

I agree with Anne. As described in the article as a photo ticket machine this is worthless in the USA. There are too many ways that alchohol vapor could be in a vehicle other than the driver exhaling it. Spilled drinks drunk passengers... Heck every taxi driver in existence would get tickets from this machine between drunk passengers, spilled or vomited alchohol, etc they would always get a positive from this machine.

We have gone from Sheriff Andy to Deputy Barney Fife armed with machine guns and armored cars, while dressed up as some kind of RobCop warriors, all with bullets, lots of bullets this time. If you think that commercial interests are not drooling over this Orwellian 1984 Sci Fi device, Andy will just nod that they are.
Errors? Who cares about errors these days as it seems that it is certainly not the police. Perhaps after much legal battling, this will be SWAT-ted down as intrusive, ineffective, a violation of Civil Rights etc and most importantly, since $$$ is the single most important driver for anything so it seems, the cost will be much greater than expected. Ooops! "Put away your laser Barney Fife."

I'm sorry, but at least two of the authors of these rather silly responses to this article haven't even bothered to read it properly as it makes it very clear (if it were not blindingly obvious) that fines for drink driving could not be issued simply on the basis of this technique.
Personally, I'd far rather have this set up than be stopped for another reason and have to waste time giving a breath test when I haven't been drinking. But then I would as I had the same idea 30 years ago after reading about a spectrum analyser been used to police the emissions of a factory chimney, remotely.
As for 'probable cause' twaddle, what would rather have? Perhaps you'd be happy for the police to have to wait until the car is wrapped around a lamp post or sitting on top of a innocent pedestrian before they have the 'right' to breath-test the driver? MW

its not a ticket machine, it is used as an alerting device... a cop would actually have to do the pull over and inspection/testing..

Just how delicate and calibrated would the device need to be in order to give an accurate reading? Could the calibration and measurement environment be certified? Doubtful. To beat this all you need to do is just drive with the windows slightly down bringing in plenty of fresh air. Alcohol concentration...0%.

Can this system tell the difference between alcohol on the breath, and alcohol emitted from freshly applied deodorant or perfume?
And what about alcohol hand wipes?
Frankly another irritating 'nanny device' that will most likely waste a lot of police time by having them stop law abiding citizens when they could actually be doing something useful to fight crime.

Considering how dangerous drunken idiots are on the road I am all for this technology. Of course it should be used sensibly, but just like pointing a radar at a car I can see no wrong with trying to check for a drunk driver.
@Anne Ominous and VirtualGathis. Seems to me neither of you have thought this through. The majority of drivers are alone in their car and for sure even more people do not have spilled alcohol or vomit in their cars thus the doubt thing is a non-issue in many scenarios that are easily ruled out.
And even for those cases where there is perhaps doubt I'd gladly risk getting pulled over for a check when being the designated driver after a party as opposed having drunken idiots behind the wheel.