Nishitetsu Kanko Bus announced that a 49 year old driver of a chartered bus is suspected of asking his colleague to take a breath test on his behalf and driving about 170 km while still having alcohol in his system. The company’s breath test system requires drivers to breath into a straw while their mobile phones take photos of their faces, but the driver is accused of splicing the straw so that his colleague could breathe into the detector from a separate tube. Similar incidents occurred at Nishitetsu Group subsidiary Nishitetsu Bus Saga in 2005 and Nishinippon Railroad in 2006, and the company was reprimanded by the Kyushu District Transportation Bureau. The driver in question performed an initial breath test on the morning of Aug. 24 at which time his blood alcohol content (BAC) was 0.109 mg, or 0.04 less than the legal limit. He then asked his colleague, whose BAC did not register on the machine, to breathe for him. The driver began driving one hour later, but the chance that he still had alcohol in his system is high. Nishitetsu has a zero tolerance policy for driving after drinking, and an official was quoted as saying, “From what I have heard, there was malicious intent, so we are considering a stiff penalty.” Source: Nishinippon Shimbun, Aug. 26
