If you blew into a machine and a number came up, I know what that number is doing to you. It sits in your head like a verdict. You’ve run the math on the drinks and the hours a dozen times, and underneath it all is the thought that convinces people to give up: the machine said it, so it must be true.
I’m Rory Safir. I was an Assistant Public Defender in Tampa before opening my own practice, and I am one of only six ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientists in Florida. I wrote a free guide, The Breath Testing Device, about the one machine every Florida breath case flows through. Here are three things from it.
Three things from the guide
The machine never touches your blood
Florida’s Intoxilyzer 8000 measures alcohol in your breath, then multiplies by an assumed ratio of 2,100 to 1 to estimate what is in your blood. It applies that same ratio, and the same assumed breath temperature of 34 degrees, to every person who blows into it. Real bodies vary, and they vary hour to hour. A warmer breath reads high, and a small shift can carry a reading across the legal limit. Nobody took your temperature before you blew.
The twenty minutes before you blew can matter as much as the number
Florida rules require the operator to watch you continuously for at least twenty minutes before the test, because a burp, reflux, dental work, or vomiting can put mouth alcohol into the sample and jump the reading. The state’s own rules treat a result as unreliable if that observation was not properly completed. In case after case, the video shows an observation that was not what the paperwork claims: officers doing paperwork, walking away, starting the clock late. The guide explains where to look.
The machine keeps records on itself, and they are public
Every Intoxilyzer in Florida has a serial number, and FDLE keeps maintenance, inspection, and calibration records for each one: failed accuracy checks, calibration drift, error codes, sometimes close to the day of your test. In one of my cases, the machine’s own electronic data showed multiple test sequences run on my client that day when the official affidavit disclosed only one. Nobody would have known without pulling the data. The guide lists exactly what I request in every breath case, and why a number near a line deserves the hardest look of all.
Where to get it
The guide is free, and one email unlocks it along with the entire Safir Guides library at thesafirlawyer.com/free-guides. For the deep coverage on the web, start with the complete breath test section of my site.
If your matter is urgent, skip the reading and call or text me at (727) 761-4318. Every case is different, and nothing here promises a result, but a number is a claim, not a fact, and claims get tested. You’re better Safir than sorry.
About the author
Rory Safir is a St. Petersburg attorney who handles injury claims and criminal defense across the Tampa Bay area. He is one of a handful of ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientists in Florida and a former Assistant Public Defender in Tampa, and he brings that same evidence-driven approach to fighting for injured clients.
