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Remote Breathalyzer
Foredecker writes: "I couldn't believe my eyes when I read an EE
Times article about
about remote breathalyzer technology
developed by TCU. This device is apparently intended for installation in new cars. In essence, it is a sensor in your car which would signal any nearby police if you had been drinking."
More like it signals police if ANYONE in your car has been drinking.
What a really good idea.
Gee, it seems very easy to defeat... let alone what if you have 3 very drunk friends in a closed window car?
As for those who would claim invasion or violation of Constitutional rights, uh, driving is a privledge, not a right. They can set arbitrary requirements up until the public throws them out.
Now, forcing this on people with at least one dui conviction would not be out of the question would it? Still the ease in fooling it kind of defeats the purpose.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Seems like no better a time to repeat:
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. "
- Ben Franklin
I would like a sensor at the local police station in my neighborhood that alerts citizens when the cops are anally raping black men with a toilet plunger. Then, maybe, I would be interested in installing this sensor in my car.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I'm stunned. Not that the device existed, but by what they want to do with it. I assumed that the posts here would be the usual ignorant overreaction to taking a line out of context, but it's not.
This is the most serious threat to American liberty since the proposed flag burning amendment [I support burning flag burners, but an amendment to ban that hateful activity will do more damage to the flag than all the cretins that ever burned it. That flag represents the very liberty that allows them to burn it, and burning it acknowleges that . . . but I digress.]
I loathe drunk drivers. After a first offense, when the license is eventually restored, the drunk should be required to have a reflective Scarlet D on all sides of the vehicle and a distinctive tint to his headlights to warn us he's coming. On a second conviction, license revocation should be permanent with no future license for anything heavier than a moped. [I *grudgingly* acknowledge that a first offense might conceivably happen to someone from not understanding the levels involved. Grudgingly. Once a person has been through that, though . .
Is it clear enough yet that I want everly last drunk caught and executed?
That said, this devise is an intrusion at the level that should have common citizens ready to take up arms against the government. This *is* an intrusive search. This is *more* than a little step down the slippery slope to the surveillance of 1984.
There is a clear role for such technology. When I first started practicing in '89, one of the lawyers from my suite came back confused as to what the judge hade ordered on a drunk. He had gone in expecting a prison term, but the judge ordered "interlock," which he'd never heard before. It was a breathalyzer attached to the ignition system, a damned good idea (add it to my D above
Something sampling the air neer the steering wheel would be harder to defeat (though how many people will breath in the tube for their driver???). As a consequence of conviction, such a device is reasonable. But this device is fundamentally flawed in concept.
Send a little signal to the police? How about *calling* them??? For that matter, the car shouldn't even *start*, or should shut off (after a warning period to pull over). This device is *insane*.
hawk, esq.