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A POLICE OFFICER administering a breathalyser test on a motorist during an islandwide Traffic Police operation which started close to midnight on Friday. A total of 98 people were asked to take the breathalyser test, of which 26 failed. -- ST PHOTO: MUCILAN RAJASEGERAN
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THE alcohol on his breath was unmistakable.
But the portly man, who was driving a big Malaysian-registered Japanese sedan, appeared remarkably lucid and sober to the untrained eye. No bloodshot eyes, unsteady gait or slurred speech.
He was even able to engage in a five-minute discussion with two Traffic Police officers on how his female companion was going to get home - across the Causeway - without him or his car.
'Let me do the test again, please,' he pleaded in halting English.
'It will be the same. You have to be tested again back at the station,' one of the officers said patiently.
The man, along with 25 other motorists, was arrested for drink driving in an islandwide Traffic Police operation that started close to midnight on Friday and went on till dawn.
In the 71/2-hour operation, 99 people were asked to take the breathalyser test. Of the 26 who failed, 24 were men and two were women. They were between 25 and 45 years old. Nine persons were also issued summons for speeding.
The operation, which had road blocks up at at least three locations - Whitley Road, Maxwell Road and Nicoll Highway - came at a time when drink driving has been hogging the spotlight.
Arrests have gone up by 27 per cent since 2004, from 2,929 cases to 3,733 cases last year. In the first nine months of this year, 11 people died because of drink driving. Last year's fatality was 25.
The police arrested 920 people for drink driving in the first quarter of this year, a 22 per cent increase from the same period last year.
Anyone caught drunk behind the wheel for the first time can be fined up to $5,000 or jailed for up to six months.
The legal limit is 35 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath, or more than 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. That works out to no more than two glasses of alcoholic drinks.
At the various road blocks, taxis were routinely waved through, but some cars were stopped.
'Sir, where did you come from?' 'Where are you going?' were the usual questions an officer asked while placing a device close to the driver's mouth.
If the gauge registered that the driver had alcohol on his breath, he was asked to pull over to take a breathalyser test.
At Nicoll Highway, a foreigner driving a leased SUV failed the test.
An officer suggested he could call a friend to come and pick up his car instead of having it towed to the police station.
'At 3.30 in the morning? I don't think so,' he said calmly before being whisked away in a police car.
dawntan@sph.com.sg
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