At a 2023 traffic safety conference, Minnesota officials promised that by the end of 2024 every police department in the state would be using a new generation of breath test machines: the Intox DMT.
It’s now September 2025.
And the rollout still hasn’t happened.
What Did the BCA Promise in 2023?
At the 2023 Toward Zero Deaths Conference, Shauna Richardson of the BCA Breath Alcohol Calibration Lab previewed the new Intox DMT. She told the audience that deployment would begin “by State Patrol districts – Late 2024.”
The changes were advertised as the most significant in years. The new Intox DMT would feature a thicker external breath tube, a refreshed software interface running on Windows 10, on-screen status messages to replace the flip charts, and a safeguard that would lock out testing for fifteen minutes after an invalid sample or a 0.02 disagreement.
On paper, it sounded like a step forward — a machine designed to be cleaner, clearer, and more defensible in court. But there was a glaring problem: Windows 10 itself is being phased out. Microsoft ends support for the operating system in October 2025, with only limited and costly extensions through 2026. That means Minnesota is preparing to roll out “new” breath test instruments powered by software that is already outdated.
Why Haven’t the New Intox DMTs Been Deployed?
Despite those promises, nothing has materialized. The BCA and DPS have issued no official announcement. There is no update on whether validation testing is complete, no Commissioner’s Order approving the device, and no confirmation that the 230-plus instruments across Minnesota are being replaced. The deadline came and went … and the silence is deafening.
Intoximeters’ Troubled History in Minnesota
One explanation may be the company behind the Intox DMT. More than ten years ago, the rights to the DataMaster were sold to Intoximeters, Inc., and Minnesota has struggled ever since.
Intoximeters once gave the BCA incorrect information about the machine’s minimum acceptance criteria — an error so severe that our firm had to point it out. Around 2018, the BCA spent taxpayer money on about thirty replacement DMTs. Those machines have never been deployed due to unresolved connectivity issues. More recently, Intoximeters has failed to train new BCA scientists. One scientist who joined the agency in March 2024 has yet to receive training on the machine’s operation, maintenance, and repair.
This isn’t just delay. It’s dysfunction.
Why the Delay Matters in DUI Cases
The consequences reach beyond bureaucratic embarrassment. Old machines with outdated safeguards remain in use. Courts continue to wrestle with challenges to the reliability of breath test results. And defendants are still judged by standards that the State itself has already admitted need to change.
If the new Intox DMTs truly represented an upgrade in fairness, usability, and scientific reliability, then the fact that Minnesota still hasn’t deployed them raises an unavoidable question: is this simply red tape, or is it yet another example of incompetence from Intoximeters — a company that has failed Minnesota for over a decade?
What’s Next?
In Part 2 of this series, I’ll dig into one of the new machine’s most curious design changes: the wider breath tube. On its face, it looks like a small tweak. But it may actually be an admission that too many people were unfairly labeled as “refusals” under the old system.
If You’ve Been Charged
If you or someone you know has been charged based on Minnesota’s outdated breath test machines, call us. The State promised a safer, more reliable system in 2023 and still hasn’t delivered. Your case may hinge on that failure.
