Ignition Interlock Care: Best Practices to Prevent Device Issues

By Your Health Magazine Contributor

Your Health Magazine Contributor

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Ignition Interlock Care: Best Practices to Prevent Device Issues

There’s an odd moment after a drink-driving offence when driving stops being something you do without thinking. The keys are still sitting on the bench. The car is still parked outside. But getting back behind the wheel can involve conditions you’ve never had to consider before. For drivers required to use an alcohol interlock, providers such as Smart Start Interlocks become part of that process. And while having a breath-testing device in your car might initially feel like another punishment, there’s another way to look at it. Your car has basically become an accountability partner.

A very strict one.

It doesn’t care that you feel fine. It doesn’t care that dinner was hours ago or that you only had a couple of drinks. Before you drive, there’s a test.

That changes your relationship with drinking and driving in a surprisingly practical way.

Guessing is suddenly taken out of the equation

Most people know that drinking heavily and then immediately driving is dangerous. The murkier area has always been everything around it.

How long has it been?

Was that glass of wine bigger than a standard drink?

Does eating help?

Surely I’m fine by now?

People are notoriously bad at answering those questions about themselves. Feeling sober and having no alcohol in your system aren’t necessarily the same thing.

An interlock removes that little internal negotiation.

The device requires a breath sample before the vehicle can be started. If the sample doesn’t meet the required conditions, the vehicle won’t start.

Simple.

And that physical barrier can change behaviour because there’s no room for the classic, “I reckon I’ll be right.”

You start planning backwards

This is probably one of the more interesting changes.

If you know you’ll need your car early tomorrow morning, tonight’s decisions suddenly have a consequence you can picture.

You’ve got to drive to work at 7 am. Or take the kids somewhere. Maybe you’ve promised to pick someone up.

Whatever it is, the car is waiting.

So instead of thinking only about whether you can drive tonight, you start thinking about tomorrow morning too.

Alcohol doesn’t disappear from the body because you’ve had a sleep, taken a cold shower or demolished a bacon and egg roll. Time matters.

That means a big night can still affect the following morning.

It’s the sort of thing people generally know in theory but don’t always consider at 11 pm when somebody suggests another round.

Your friends might find the device fascinating

People are curious.

Put an unfamiliar bit of technology inside a car and somebody will eventually ask what it does.

That conversation can feel uncomfortable at first. There’s no point pretending otherwise.

But you don’t need to provide your entire driving history every time somebody gets into the passenger seat. A simple explanation works.

It’s an alcohol interlock. I have to provide a breath sample before driving.

Done.

Regular drivers of the vehicle should also understand how the system works. If your partner occasionally takes your car to the shops or a family member borrows it, don’t wait until they’re sitting behind the wheel to explain everything.

Nobody wants an urgent phone call from an Aldi car park asking why the car won’t start.

The little habits matter more than you’d expect

Living with an interlock isn’t only about avoiding alcoholic drinks before driving.

Users also need to follow the instructions supplied for their device carefully. Everyday products, food and drinks can sometimes contain small amounts of alcohol or leave substances in the mouth that interfere with a breath sample.

This is where routines help.

Plain water is useful. So is giving yourself enough time before leaving rather than eating breakfast, brushing your teeth and sprinting directly into the car.

And read the instructions.

I know. Nobody enjoys reading instructions.

But five minutes spent understanding the device is better than staring angrily at its screen at 6:45 in the morning because you don’t understand what it’s asking you to do.

The car becomes slightly less spontaneous

This might be the part people notice most.

Before an interlock, driving somewhere could be almost automatic.

Need milk?

Grab the keys.

Mate needs a lift?

Sure.

Feel like heading somewhere for lunch?

Let’s go.

With an interlock fitted, there’s a process attached to starting and using the vehicle. Depending on your program, there can also be retests during a journey and scheduled servicing requirements.

So you become more organised.

Actually, maybe organised is giving us too much credit. You become more aware of what driving involves.

Appointments need to go into the calendar. Longer trips might need a little planning. If another person regularly uses the vehicle, they need to know how the device works.

None of that is especially dramatic. It’s just different.

And eventually it becomes boring

That’s probably a good thing.

The strange device you were hyper-aware of during the first few days gradually becomes another object inside the car.

Seatbelt.

Mirrors.

Phone connected.

Breath test.

Start the engine.

You still have to follow the rules of your particular alcohol interlock program, of course. Australian requirements aren’t identical everywhere, so advice from somebody who completed a program in another state isn’t necessarily useful.

But the mechanics of living with the device become familiar.

And perhaps that’s one of the more useful things about alcohol interlocks.

They’re not asking you to make a judgement about whether you’re okay to drive. There’s no calculation based on how you feel, what you ate or whether the drinks were “only beers”.

The car simply asks for evidence first.

For someone rebuilding their driving habits after a drink-driving offence, that little interruption can be surprisingly powerful. It turns something abstract, don’t drink and drive, into a physical routine that happens every time you get behind the wheel.

Eventually, you might barely think about it.

But the habit remains.