Sensor Measures In Fingertips If Driver Is Drunk 549
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The Economic Times reports on the first working prototypes of a new technology that would measure blood alcohol content in a driver's fingertips, using sophisticated touch-based sensors situated in steering wheels and door locks and engineers say that unlike court-ordered breath-analyzer ignition locks, which require a driver to blow into a tube and wait a few seconds for the result, their systems will analyze a driver's blood-alcohol content in less than one second. Anti-drunken driving crusaders believe that almost 9,000 road traffic deaths could be prevented every year if alcohol detection devices were used in all vehicles to prevent alcohol-impaired drivers from driving their vehicles. 'We believe this might turn the car into the cure for the elimination of drunk driving,' says Laura Dean-Mooney, president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. But not everyone is enamored of the device which could be available to automakers in eight to 10 years. 'For ordinary, law-abiding citizens, it's an invasion of their privacy,' says Christen Varley, president of the Greater Boston Tea Party."
Its Winter. (Score:5, Insightful)
My fingers get cold. I drive with gloves, at least till the car warms up.
I imagine drunk drivers would do the same.
Re:Its Winter. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wear glove, then you don't get to drive your car. Its not like they really give a damn if you are cold or not. They want to invade your privacy and control your daily life, at all costs.
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Is it really an invasion of privacy if no one else is notified of it? It doesn't report you to the authorities, it just stops the engine from starting. I agree there are other problems with the system, but privacy is not one of them.
Re:Its Winter. (Score:4, Insightful)
Give it up hell. If I'm not a convicted drunk driver they have ZERO business testing me every time i get in my car. It IS an invasion of my rights, regardless of any 'tracking' that may or may not occur.
As a private citizen that has not been convicted nor under court ordered investigation, i refuse to have my rights invaded.
Gloves. (Score:2)
Agree. This is stupid, because gloves exist and people often wear them while driving.
Also, this eliminates drunk driving how? I find it useful to point out that another word for "elimination" is "shitting". Are they shitting us? They've got to be.
In conclusion, I would like to feed your fingertips to the wolverines. Thankyouveddymuch.
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If you want to end drunk driving, then it'd help to have actual public transportation that doesn't cost an arm and a leg and is readily available in most areas. Cabs are ridiculously expensive, buses and light rails are only in metro areas.
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Providing public transportation "readily available in most areas" is the perfect definition of "costing an arm and a leg".
This only works in dense urban areas.
Re:Its Winter. (Score:4, Insightful)
The vast majority of people don't drive drunk. You don't punish the entire population for the action of a few. I live in the Northeast. It was -5F (-15 C) the other day. I wore my fucking gloves at all times. I never drive with any alcohol in my system, period. I picked where I live for the fact that I can walk wherever I need to go, except for work. If I want to go drink myself into oblivion, it is a short walk away to get the job done. No car is needed. It is stupid, wasteful, annoying, and flatly unfair that I have to shoulder the cost of this stupid system, suffer my car being incapacitated if it fails, and have to take my damned gloves off every fucking morning in the sub-zero cold to prove to my car that no, I didn't wake up and do a few shots before work.
If you want to install these things on first time drunk driver offenders, I am all for it. Installing these stupid things on the car of every single citizen on the other hand is wasteful, insulting, and frankly, fucking stupid. Save the money you were going to waste on this asinine system on something that might actually be helpful. A sleep detection system that you can fucking turn off if it is malfunctioning or not working for you would be wonderful. Better yet, just take all of the money you were about to piss away and use it to improve health care, or make better roads, give the damned money back, or do something that benefits all citizens, not punishes the vast majority because of the actions of a few.
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There are countless stupid things you could do to try and minimize the risk of harm. You could mandate that speed limits can not be higher than 30 and that anyone caught breaking the speed limit gets a 10 year jail sentence. That would pretty much end car based fatalities. If you really want to save lives, you could make food that is bad for you illegal. You could bring back alcohol prohibition. You could do all of these things and save lives. Of course, you would be pissed when it takes thee hours to
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That will be REAL popular with drivers up north. Especially with people who don't drink anyway but DO have poor circulation in their hands.
Let's just ban Alcohol like we did with Marijuana (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem solved. The marijuana/cocaine/etc ban makes it illegal to imbibe these substances. So let's just do the same with alcohol, and all our problems will disappear. No more drunks == no more drunk driving.
Note:
I'm being sarcastic.
Re:Let's just ban Alcohol like we did with Marijua (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem solved. The marijuana/cocaine/etc ban makes it illegal to imbibe these substances. So let's just do the same with alcohol, and all our problems will disappear. No more drunks == no more drunk driving.
Note:
I'm being sarcastic.
I certainly hope so. People should be able to put anything they want into their bodies, upto and including cyanide. Else they are not truly free.
Deal with the abuse of the drugs (DUI) not the banning of them, or alcohol.
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I want to put you inside my body.
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Deal with the abuse of the drugs (DUI) not the banning of them, or alcohol.
That's exactly what this invention does. I'm for it.
Driving while drunk is against the law: If you're drunk and you turn the key, you have broken the law. This invention determines whether you are currently breaking the law, not whether you're likely to do so, or have done so in the past.
The "privacy" argument would only make sense if you believe that the actions you take with your car are your own, private business. Considering that they travel on public roads, I disagree with that belief, and frankly find
Re:Let's just ban Alcohol like we did with Marijua (Score:4, Interesting)
I made this point in response to someone else, but: Alcohol impairs response time (and judgment, to some extent, but response time most of all). We had been nearly parked in during a Christmas party: My (entirely sober) wife was unwilling to attempt extraction, but understanding alcohol impairment, was happy to let me pull our car out of its parking place. I did so, then turned the driver's seat over to her. With the article's alcohol detection system in place, I would not have been able to drive at all, not even in a private drive (where we'd been parked); it couldn't know "public roads" (your term) from the private drive, where I endangered no one.
Re:Let's just ban Alcohol like we did with Marijua (Score:4, Insightful)
Endangering one's self is freedom. Endangering other's life abuses other's freedom.
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Everything in the world interacts with everything else - somehow - so you can always identify some way in which what you're doing takes something from or harms someone else. Which leaves us only with "no one can do anything" unless we start imposing a cutoff and say "you're allowed to harm others and impose on their freedom a tiny bit." And at that point, we're right back to argu
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I don't see how it falls apart. If someone drives impaired (by a drug or something else), and hurts or kills someone, then obviously that action should be illegal. That means that drunk or drugged driving should be illegal, as it already is. You can get powerful prescription drugs perfectly legally, but if you drive under their influence and hurt someone, you g
10 years? (Score:5, Interesting)
If cars are still able to be crashed in 10 years, I think something has gone wrong. Isn't the real solution to drunk driving to get rid of all people controlled driving? That could be the great selling point of more automated cars: "Feel free to drive home drunk."
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To error is human.
To really foul things up, you need a computer.
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To error is human. To really foul things up, you need a computer.
Which one are you?
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Yet we have been expecting self-driving cars since the 70's. Man is driven by the irrational fear of being not in control. Our minds are programed to think we can do better for ourselves than relying on another to not screw up.
Self driving cars = public transit. I highly doubt we will see self driving cars for individuals for at least another 50 years.
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Dude, the way I drive, anyone driving faster than me is a maniac!
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Yet we have been expecting self-driving cars since the 70's... I highly doubt we will see self driving cars for individuals for at least another 50 years.
I'm not so sure that it will be as long as you think -- the tech was a long way off in the 70's but it is very close to solid enough. It just needs to be cleaned up and implemented. Hell, it is already being implemented in the self-parking cars and the intelligent cruise control. There will be some resistance to self-driving cars, but I think that the results will speak for themselves very shortly after they are implemented.
Insane libertarian (Score:2)
'For ordinary, law-abiding citizens, it's an invasion of their privacy,' says Christen Varley, president of the Greater Boston Tea Party."
Provided it's between you and the car that the car refused to transport you because you were drunk, that isn't an invasion of privacy.
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But if one is convicted of drunk driving, then it is not so much a invasion of privacy as much as security theater. The appropriate penalty for drunk driving is temp
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I am pretty sure that 2 tons of steel traveling at 70 miles an hour is entirely capable of alienating you from your right to life. Same goes for a half ounce of lead at 900 miles an hour.
Why not just put them (Score:2)
on the house door knob or car door handle so you can us from ourselves.
Re:Why not just put them (Score:4, Funny)
I think you accidentally a verb.
DUI Hysteria (Score:5, Insightful)
But folks, let's have some perspective with the hysteria: 9000 death a year are in fact one of the smaller numbers in the world of preventable deaths.
The hysteria far outweighs the threat, much like TSA and air travel.
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Yes, but, there are 9000 est. deaths a year...
Which is FAR FAR FAR more than the number of deaths you can attribute to terrorists ....
Hysteria certainly describes TSA and Homeland security.
Given the resources being allocated to reducing drunk driving (compared to TSA and Homeland security) I'd say it is better spent.
Most likely though at this point it would not be unreasonable to start looking at just making all cars and passengers safer regardless of whether there is any alcohol involved as there are more
Re:DUI Hysteria (Score:5, Informative)
You can blame an organization that started good, and went bad for this problem. They're called MADD. Even police hate dealing with them these days they're down right bat shit insane.
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and Liberals think everyone that disagrees with them to be racist Nazis.
At least the Tea Party guys don't want to take 3/4 of my paycheck and give it to some mouthbreather.
Re:DUI Hysteria (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed, the hysteria surrounding intoxicated driving seems to outweigh the threat. As you mentioned, the number of yearly deaths attributable to intoxicated driving is a drop in the preventable death bucket. However, several (but not all) of the other types of preventable death are brought upon oneself, such as death from prolonged tobacco smoking. With intoxicated driving the victim is not necessarily the intoxicated individual, it can be a passenger or another driver/pedestrian. Those individuals often have families, which introduces a very emotional and tragic aspect to preventable death by an intoxicated driver. That's why you have such powerful lobbying groups like MADD, which leads to (in my opinion) overzealous pursuit of intoxicated drivers and the prevention of intoxicated driving.
It would be refreshing if some of the more substantial causes of preventable death received the same attention and lobbying.
Re:DUI Hysteria (Score:4, Insightful)
But those 9000 deaths a year are distributed across the entire demographic of people. The common cold might kill more people each year but if those people were all over 90, it really is not as bad. As it stands, automobile accidents are the number 1 cause of death for people in their 20s. Not all of these deaths are alcohol related, but many are. I have personally known people who have died in the following ways:
1 - avoiding an animal (or so we assume)
2 - due to being intoxicated
1 - hit by a train - alcohol a likely factor
2 - oncoming incapacitated driver - likely fell asleep at the wheel
So of the 5 fatal accidents, 3 have been related to alcohol, 1 related to incapacitated driver, 1 unavoidable accident.
I do not think that sensors present in steering wheels will work, but trying to find ways to curb those 9000 deaths/year is a good idea. Comparing this to the hysteria of air travel / TSA is ridiculous - we are talking about two very different scales.
Invasion of privacy?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Call me stupid but how is this an invasion of privacy, it's not like information regarding your drunkenness is being passed over to the authorities.
Mark Hinkle, chairman of the Libertarian National Committee, fears the devices could evolve like seat belts — introduced as voluntary safety features that become lawfully enforced.
Oh yes those evil seat belts made mandatory because they save peoples lives, damn evil big government regulating car safety . Has it come to the point where there has to be a knee-jerk reaction to everything just for the sake of it?
Re:Invasion of privacy?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh yes those evil seat belts made mandatory because they save peoples lives, damn evil big government regulating car safety . Has it come to the point where there has to be a knee-jerk reaction to everything just for the sake of it?
People get bitter when laws start going down the slippery slope.
In 32 States, driving without a seat belt is a primary offense.
In how many of those States do you think people were told upfront that the law would eventually become a primary offense?
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You've gotta love the USA:
"I demand my right to needlessly die if I am involved in a car accident!"
Evolution? surely not (Score:2)
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So, it's an invasion of privacy when a machine has a safety interlock? It's an invasion of privacy that I can't run my microwave with the door open? It's an invasion of privacy that my circuit breaker cuts power if I drop a toaster in the bathtub?
No, that's absurd. Those are all safety features, and so would this be. Now, I think mandatory interlocks on all cars would be a waste of money, but acting like it's some intrusion in our lives by Big Brother is dishonest.
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It's not the same thing at all. A safety interlock is there to stop you from interfering with a process underway, or from being damaged by an accident (your toaster case).
In neither case did it prevent you from doing what you want.
A better example would be a microwave door handle that would detect your BMI and then decide whether or not you could open it.
In the case of the car, a decision would be made to stop you from initiating a process (a decision that could be deeply flawed, or even a malfunction)
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The decision to use seatbelts is taken out of your hands because much of the time, when people are injured in car accidents, my taxpayer money goes towards your ambulance, police, and hospital care. Particlarly if you have no insurance. If you have insurance in the US, it's quite often Medicaid or Medicare, so my taxpayer money is going towards it anyway.
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Except in A&E costs if you have an accident and you dont also have health insurance* when you ARE hurting others.
*another batshit idea from teh US - denying health service unless you can afford them.
Wrong way to think about it (Score:5, Insightful)
If the court can order you to pay for an ignition interlock after a DUI, then it can sure as hell order you to sell your car, period.
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Absolutely. Drunk driving isn't close to the leading cause of preventable deaths, but I think that it's rather easily preventable. Just man up and institute real penalties for that. First offense, considerable fine, second time, permanent revocation of driving license.
I don't get the apparent sympathy towards drunk drivers. It's easy not to drive drunk. People who can't control themselves and do drive drunk are a danger, and need to be treated accordingly, as in not letting them drive. I'm aware that there
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I may not have the best perspective here, as someone who doesn't drive, but why would you want even someone with a BAS of 0.08% at the wheel? The effects do vary greatly per person, but 0.08% is enough for many people to affect attention span and fine muscle coordination. That's already a person that is not at their best capacity due to alcohol.
At least in the local news I get, drunk drivers tend not to be chronic drunks, but rather people who had a few drinks at a party or such and believed themselves to b
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Excellent point. In places like Sweden (I think), it's illegal to drive with the flu, because it's proven that they have reaction times more sluggish than even drunk drivers with a BAC of 0.08%
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You can play the game of perfection, but you'll then have to specify no driving right after a meal, nor too close to bed time, nor too soon after getting up. Certainly no driving after getting really upsetting news. After all, why would I want people driving if they're even the tiniest bit off of their peak performance?
The old standard of 0.12 was set based on advice from experts as to what level would have a significant (as in measurable) impact on driving performance.
Many people (diabetics for example) wi
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The first scenario is a mistake that anyone could make.
The mistake is to drive after drinking *at all*. If you're going to drive, don't drink. If you're going to drink, don't drive. All this pish about "oh 0.08% BAC makes you less impaired than being a bit tired" is a lot of bloody nonsense. If you're so tired that your driving is impaired don't drive. It's not a hard concept to grasp - if your concentration or reaction time is impaired, leave the car alone.
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Tell that to thousands upon thousands of bar owners who have no public transportation to and from their establishment. Tell that to the guy who just wants to MEET a friend for a couple beers. Having one or two beers and driving is totally acceptable to me. Most of the morons out there on their cell phones are far less capable than your average "I had 2 beers with dinner" driver.
If you really want to solve the problem your way (one drink = no driving) and do it realistically then you need to ad
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Around here first DUI offense is ~$1000 + licence revoked for six months; repeat offense is 10-15 days in jail + confiscation of car + permanent revocation of driving licence.
When it was implemented a few years ago, it really did wonders in changing the attitude of people I know.
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I have a more personal account of someone who had an interlock on their car and has flown right - mostly due to life changes and learning that drinking and driving affects more than just their life. The interlock devices can save lives - but them alone won't teach someone that drinking and driving is wrong.
And let's face it - most places in the USA you NEED a car to get to work at the very least. It's either that or you go the other route and just drive illegally (i.e. no insurance, no license, car not re
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Its pretty simple not to drink and drive.
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Well, if they lose their job they don't need to drive to work, do they? If they're on unemployment benefit they can't afford to drive anyway, so logically that stops them from drink-driving.
Do you expect me to be sympathetic? They chose to drive drunk, so they get to live with what happens when you drive drunk. If that means they lose their licence, their job, their car and their house, tough shit. They shouldn't have driven drunk, then.
Actually punish drunk drivers (Score:2, Insightful)
Can we try that first?
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YES!
I'm sick of the "do we have to wait" excuse. Yes we do have to wait. Do you want to round up all muslims because they could be terrorists? Do you want to round up all the "odd people" because they could be perverts? Or how about rounding up all geeks, we could all be hackers as far as Average Joe out there is concerned.
Yes, we do have to wait for someone to break the law before we punish him. Then we should punish him and make sure that he cannot endanger the public again. "Pre-emptive" measures mean no
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So technically nobody should complain about DRM. If it fails to work in your machine and locks you out even though you bought it fairly, or if the shitty driver somehow fucks up your system, it's just an inconvenience. After all, the game could crash due to a bug just as well as for the reason that the verification server cannot be reached for a few seconds, and that shitty copycripple driver that BSODs your system, well, any driver could be faulty, right?
But just like that testing part it's something that
It won't work. (Score:3)
Driving drunk is already against the law. If someone decides to drive drunk, bypassing a sensor is the least of their concerns.
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You're missing the point. Due to the nature of drunk driving a lot of the people who commit it aren't aware that they're impaired. This could prevent someone who is black-out drunk from climbing into their car and driving into traffic.
Everybody pays for the stupidity of the few (Score:5, Insightful)
Stuff happens, people die. One of my best friends in high school was killed when his car was hit by a drunk. To me, I'd rather the drunk lost his license rather than my car fitted with an interlock. I don't even drink, why should I have to pay for someone else's irresponsibility?
Measures like this are a waste of everyone's resources that distract from more serious problems - broken education, declining scientific investment, an uncompetitive economy, etc.
stupidity of the few (Score:2)
Folks need to be responsible (Score:3)
If your society needs to rely on electronic gadgets in cars to prevent drunk drivers, you're fucked. "Mind if I pass you, Lindsay Lohan, you are swerving on the highway? Oh, look, Charlie Sheen has passed out on the side of the road again."
In the country where I live, kids can drink alcoholic beverages when they are 16. But they are taught not to drink and drive. You will see a table with a bunch of teenage guys quaffing beers. And one guy will be drinking Coca-Cola. Guess who is driving.
To hammer the point home again, teaching people not to drink and drive is better than any control mechanism.
I mistrust MADD (Score:5, Informative)
I flat-out mistrust MADD, which is always on the side of more police power. They are to the traffic police what child pornography is to Internet regulation.
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That's a mischaracterization. They are only on the side of more police power in terms of drunk driving. It's a very limited subset of traffic law. They don't really care about warrants to search your trunk etc. let alone the rest of the police actions.
Override available? (Score:2)
So, will there be some kind of "override" for dangerous situations? Like, I do not PLAN on driving that day, so I have a beer or two and am just over the limit where the car won't start anymore, but then suddenly space aliens with anal probes arrive and I *really* need to drive away fast - but the car won't let me.
Or any other, more real life situation - say, you THINK you're still under the limit, on the way to your car you get assaulted by some criminal, you just make it to your car and want to get away,
Punish the guilty instead. (Score:3)
Preventive measures that encumber everyone are merely a PC effort to avoid punishing the guilty.
DUI should carry a one-year mandatory jail sentence. Don't want to get busted? Don't fucking drink and drive.
As I used to tell my military motorcycle safety classes:
"I might drink 'til it runs out my ears, but I don't drive until I'm sober and alert. Party at the house, take everyone's keys, and we won't be going to a memorial service for a dead drunk or the people they kill."
This is amount government contracts. (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't let them bullshit you for one second that the value of lives is at all relevant to them, here. The motivating factor is the value of the government contracts that will be handed out should this idea succeed. The same kind of contracts that benefit certain industries if we fall for the idea that we should stick everyone under house arrest and fit them with an electronic bracelet for even the slightest crime (and, of course, people will think that's a tremendous idea if the alternative is jail time).
The result is an enormous revenue stream. Every single person in this country convicted of some sort of a violation (in this case, we'll just stick to alcohol related) fitted with an expensive device for an additional expensive installation fee. Then their car, fitted with an expensive device and another expensive installation fee. Then expensive monthly subscriptions (paid out of the individual's pocket) for monitoring and maintenance. If you don't have the money or you find it an abhorrent solution, then you can always opt not to participate and not pay all of that money. Of course, then we're going to lock you up in prison for a year. So it's not like we're not giving you freedom of choice!
If they REALLY gave a fuck about preventing lives, the solution wouldn't involve ridiculously complex and expensive monitoring and fittings and equipment farmed out to private industry. The solution would be that if you are convicted of driving drunk, your license would be revoked for the rest of your life and if you still put society in danger by driving without a license, then we stick you in prison.
Hand Sanitizer = false positive? (Score:3)
What about those people who are constantly using those alcohol-based hand sanitizer products? Will their car assume that they are drunk and refuse to start?
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I really doubt this is based on alcohol on your hands. I don't know you, but when I drink my beer, I rarely get some on my fingers.
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The sensors I am aware of detect minute amounts of alcohol which diffuse out of the bloodstream and through your epidermis. The actual sensor technology can be a self-generating fuel cell (like a flammable gas detector), or an optical absorption type affair, but both would be equally disrupted by surface contamination with alcohol.
Math is Your Friend (Score:3)
>> Anti-drunken driving crusaders believe that almost 9,000 road traffic deaths could be prevented every year if alcohol detection devices were used in all vehicles to prevent alcohol-impaired drivers from driving their vehicles.
How to Measure Anything [howtomeasureanything.com] is an awesome book.
43,443 deaths from traffic accidents in 2005 (the worst year in the past 20). To prevent 9,000, one in five traffic fatalities would have to be due to alcohol impairment and be prevented by the system.
That may be true, I don't have the stats handy for a more precise measurement.
We must also consider cost. There are three hundred million people in the united states. If one in three have access to a car, and on average those one in three start their car once every three days (call it 100 starts per year on average), that equals (300m / 3) * 100, or ten billion starts per year.
The value of a human life (according to wrongful death suits) is about $25m. Very rough guess, of course.
What is the cost of you car failing to start? Something more than a dollar and less than -- maybe $100 -- on average. Wild-assed guess range there, so I made it broad.
250m vehicles on the road, 10 years median age, 25m new cars per year.
Device cost $25 - $100. Guessing, should be in there, including sensor, interlock, maintenance, and engineering it into the system -- once production ramps up.
9,000 deaths (perhaps an overestimate, probably not an underestimate, IMO)
10b starts per year
Start value range $1-$100
$25m value per life
25m vehicles per year.
Device cost $25 - $100 per unit.
$25m per life times 10k lives (rounding up) = $250b per year.
25m devices times $25 - $100 = $625m - $2.5b per year.
So the device cost portion is essentially inconsequential.
10b starts * {$1 - $100} per start = $10b - $1t start value per year.
{$10b - $1t} / $25b = 0.4 to 4.
Even if you assume $100 value per start, the device only has to make the right decision 3 out of 4 times to be worth it.
When I started this calculation, I was expecting to show numbers clearly opposed to this obvious infringement of personal liberty. I don't like the answer, but it is what it is. These numbers could be off. Given the spin I wanted to put on it, I intentionally edged the numbers in favor of the devices to mitigate the risk of being considered a charlatan.
Based on this rough calculation, it looks like the pure economic case for the devices might hold water.
it's a modern temperance movement (Score:3)
MADD's goal is prohibition. Along the way they make alliances with politicians and companies eager to manufacture devices like this. If they succeed in getting this crap mandated on all cars, clever drunks will circumvent it and less technologically savvy teetotalers will find themselves unable to drive once these sensors fail. Just look at all the O2 sensor failures. This one will fail too and likely be expensive to replace. Maybe this is what it will take to turn the public against MADD. Go for it MADD. Hike up the cost and failure rate of cars.
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Also - nvm how driving drunk is not exactly "law abiding" - being killed or losing somebody, all in the name of some drunk who wanted to have a ride, is a much, much greater invasion of privacy.
Re:Privacy? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the data is collected then someone will find a way to abuse it.
Think about your insurance company or employer. If they could go back and pull your auto's history of your intoxication logs. They would find a way to use this to their advantage.
The collection and retention is data is generally to the disadvantage of the little guy...
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I don't really see a problem with this. If you drive drunk, you are probably an unacceptable risk for an insurance company. Here in the UK, many people convicted of drink-driving find that after their ban has expired they still cannot drive, because no insurance company will touch them.
Re:Privacy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Required liability insurance should not work as punishment. I can understand why insurance companies may want to increase the premium, but outright denying coverage should not be allowed.
This is similar to the issue of sex offender registration. If a guy has paid from his crimes (fine, driving ban, jail, whatever), then he should not have to suffer any more.
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They're not "denied coverage", it's just priced well out of their reach. Tough shit, shouldn't have driven drunk.
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Er, why shouldn't it? You'd rather force insurance companies to take risks that as honest businesses, they shouldn't? Introduce either additional legislation forcing companies to provide insurance to high-risk individuals, or starting up a separate government insurance for individuals who can't get insurance from private companies?
The insurance is required because otherwise innocent individuals would need to pay for the damages caused by others, but drunk drivers are regarded as a high risk by companies, an
Re:Privacy? (Score:5, Interesting)
In Colorado, the data captured by the interlock device is periodically downloaded by the installer and sent to the Department of Revenue. If the driver has failed the test 3 or more times in a 12 month period their license is again suspended regardless of the cause of the failure.
False positives are a common occurrence and result in more than just the inconvenience of not being able to start the car.
The device itself is a point of failure that can render your car useless until you have it towed to a shop for repairs.
You might believe that repeat offenders deserve the hassle of the interlock device but requiring all vehicles to have some sort of alcohol monitoring system is costly, ineffective, dumb and wrong.
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That doesn't make any sense.
First of all, if the driver has this installed because they have been convicted of driving drunk . . . WHY ARE THEY BEING ALLOWED TO DRIVE AT ALL?
Second of all, if the device is preventing the person from driving, who cares if they fail the "test" a thousand times in a year?
This kind of stuff reminds me of the bullshit in Oregon. In Oregon, we have the OLCC (Oregon Liquor Control Commission). In Oregon, a shop keeper is not allowed to directly purchase alcohol. The state purchase
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I don't get that either. If you are caught drink driving then you are firstly lead into a police car, which all the passers by will see. Then once you are at the police station your privacy is invaded even further. I don't know if they take fingerprints for a dui but they most likely take a blood test.
I'm not sure if they are proposing this for everyone or just convicted drunk drivers. If it's the latter then I can't see how anyone could complain about it.
Still... this would be a good case for "let the lawm
Re:Too mild... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, according to this [usatoday.com], about 32% of all car accident-related deaths are due to drunk driving. That means, that 68% are due to non-drunk driving! People, if you want to lower the number of people killed in traffic accidents, start drinking, because the sober people are more dangerous.
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Yeah, yeah, and drive far, far away from where you're living because statistics show that the majority of car accidents happen within 100 miles of your point of residence. Also, stay away from hospitals when you are sick, in developed countries most people die in hospitals!
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You do realize I was joking, right?
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Yeah, I'm sure the unreasonable/cruel/unusual punishments bit
I don't see how that would apply. You do not have the right to drive - it is a privilege. If you abuse that privilege, you don't get to drive any more.
What, you don't think that your actions should have any consequences?
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Compared against what happens in, say, El Salvador [blogcritics.org], I'm sure that people would be willing to accept losing their license for life.
Norway is probably the most metered and acceptable to US audiences... first offense = 1 year loss of license, second = lost license for life. Though I'd prefer to see El Salvador's approach to drunk driving enacted....
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If this actually worked it would simply make the crime impossible(well, unless you use gloves). Nobody has to go to jail, nobody has to lose their license, it seems like a pretty good solution to me.
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Can this system detect the difference because my car just overheated and I spilled cool and all over my hands.
I presume you meant Spilled Coolant. (I've seen people who oozed cool, but none that spilled it.).
Not being a chemist, I'm not sure if Ethylene glycol or Propylene glycol is detected as alcohol or not.
You may have meant windshield washer fluid, which often contains methanol. Methanol is seldom used for engine coolant
additives any more.
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No MADD would rather no one drink, ever.