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Steering Wheel Checks Alcohol Consumption
karvind writes "According to washingtonpost, Inventor Dennis Bellehumeur has made a $600 sensor that can be installed in a steering wheel or in gloves and will test a driver's skin to determine alcohol consumption. Bellehumeur, a real estate agent and deli owner in Wilton Manors, spent 12 years developing his sensor after his then-teenage son crashed into a utility pole while driving drunk and suffered minor brain damage. He received a patent this month and the sensor should complete testing this year."
Drunken driving accidents increase in winter because every senselessly drunken teenager not properly educated by their parents will be wearing branded non-sensored gloves.
And will the car come to a stop if a person only starts drinking (and got drunk) after the car's moving?
And will those drunken teenagers just steal some non-sensored cars which they're not familar to drive with?
I think this "invention" is as good as the censorship card on cable TV, or that running shoes that power the TV. However the only "reactive invention" that I would like to see is a law punishing parents who cannot educate, manner, guide and monitor their children.
If I had to go to jail when my kid killed someone under the influence, I would have had one kid instead of five, and spent more time on that one kid. If I can't afford the time, maybe I am not qualified to have kids at all?
Actually while we are at it, maybe XBox 361 or PS4 can have a built-in features where parents create home work and children must complete them to get to the game?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Make drivers fill out captchas? Then at least we'll be safe from blind drivers.
This would stop the drunk driver from being able to have somebody else blow into the tube for them so they can start the car.
I would imagine this could have many uses. My first would be to put one on my phone. And my keyboard, now that I think about it.
I'm sure there's a ton of people who would appreciate me doing so.
This is an absolutely brilliant idea. Hundreds of people die each year as a result of alcohol-related automobile crashes. Of course it could be bypassed by having a non-drunk passenger touch the wheel first, but then again, if there was a passenger present that's sober enough to drive, they should be driving in the first place.
$600 per car is not a lot to spend to ensure road safety. Perhaps this should become required by law. I'm no fan of big-brotherly ideas, but this wouldn't necessarily *have* to report someone to the police just for attempting to drive a car drunk, and could still manage to save countless lives.
....I happen to be a bartender, and I happen to spill a few ounces of vodka on my hands? What happens then?
My other Sig is
A somewhat good news patent story on slashdot is a nice find. I hope he does well. It must be a terrible thing to have to go through what he went through and I hope he finds success in this and it brings him some comfort in that it may help others.
Open Source Java DAO Generator
If I had just been cleaning things with alcohol, would it set this off?
Before anyone goes off about freedom being limited, rights, etc... come on. Nobody has the right to drive drunk.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
...who's going to pay for this?
It seems to me short of a court order, nobody's going to ever get one of these in their car.
"I'm not sure the auto industry is prepared to accept that for cost reasons," he said. "Neither will the driving public because the majority of them don't drink and drive. We're not there yet."
This is -exactly- why we have government-mandated safety equipment. Think of it as a safety device mounted not just in your car, but outside it as well --- every one of these devices is another potential drunk driver kept off the road.
One more thing to break preventing my car from working and leaving me sober and stranded in the middle of nowhere, with a broken part that's only available from the dealer thereby leaving my car unrepairable by the local garage off the freeway in Idaho.
As the number of gadgets that have to function correctly for cars to run increases, the probability of getting from point A to B decreases to zero.
well, i guess this will probably become manditory by an act of congress fradulently passed under "interstate commerce" or linked as a stick to the carrot of highway funds which were pirated from the states anyway. This will then be revisited under "your rights online" and decried for slashdotters. Meanwhile, this guy will be lauded as uber hacker++ and hailed as a genus and possessing what we all wish he had. He will get rich because it will become manditory and then he'll be called evil. Not a troll, you all know it's coming.
..but there's already something out for people that got a DUI, it basically forces you to take a breathalyzer test before your engine starts. Google won't spit out a proper link though, so if someone could give me the link...
It'd probably be much cheaper than $600 a car.
I hear rubbing alcohol makes a greater disinfectant and shine than Armor-All. And what with the prospect of RFID in every product or particle we buy, it's only a matter of time that the steering wheel automatically confesses and pays an implied DUI ticket on your behalf. UCC Redemption is the only way...
without prejudice
I live in Minnesota. It's damn cold here in the winter so everyone wears gloves. Obviously the inventor has never tried touching a stearing wheen with bare hands when it's 5 degrees below zero (F) outside.
I was not touched there by an angel.
after his then-teenage son crashed into a utility pole while driving drunk and suffered minor brain damage
A technical solution to a behavioural problem... yeah, those always work.
Trolling is a art,
That's a lot of beer.
i'll just drive with my knees next time im drunk.
What's to stop you from just wearing gloves (assuming you have enough wits about you to put them on) or installing a steering-wheel cover (if it is your folks car)? Covers these days don't have to be laced on, they can just slip on. I know that's taking it a bit too far, but I don't see this thing as much of a solution.
Now for my opinion, I am in high school, probably the age group this is intended to protect. First of all what is the point in installing a 600 dollar sensor in a 300 dollar car. Also there are probably hundreds of thousands if not millions high schoolers who can drive. Most of them are safe drivers, who don't drink and driver but it is that small number who give the rest a bad name. I will admit there is drinking in high school, probably more than most studies suggest, but it is not necessarily the parents fault.
I have seen some of the smartest people, most atheletic, and having the greatest potential get messed up. Partially it is the culture but it also is the life, having a tough life never seeing the affects of alcohol, like some have.
What do the gloves look like? Do they have sequins on them? Can they detect Jesus Juice? What, too soon?
I can't be the only person who immediately contemplated swabbing their friends steering wheels with rubbing alcohol.
No driving for you. ONE YEAR!
plus one would be good on my phone to help prevent "drunk dialing". Actually, come to think of it, there's a lot of things this thing could help me from doing while drunk ...
Gloves.
Please, first of all... speak for the city you are in maybe, but around here we dont wear gloves int hwe winter.... 60 degrees just doesnt need it. And the occurences that you speak of.... the time its really cold and the drunk kid gets into his car (assuming its the glove setup and not the steering wheel one, which makes more sense) the car would probably just report back it cant get a reading.
And then the work around is that most kids will STEAL A CAR??? please, what part of town do you live in that this is your "obvious" alternative??
This may work, it may not, but those are just rediculous examples of what might go wrong.
It's much more likely that the tech gets circumvented, hacked, or whatever than it it becomes the reason kids steal cars.... lol.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
The 1927 model 'T' Ford cost $3138.49 in 2005 dollars. Ponder that for a bit.
Here's a rational thought:
One shot of hard alcohol = one wineglass of wine = one bottle of beer = one FULL hour not driving.
Or if math is too hard:
I've been drinking alcohol tonight. It does not matter how much, I will not be the driver.
Or if an obsessive-compulsive "drinking and gadgets" disorder is present in the person:
There's fifty thousand different types of alcohol analyzers out there that you can buy already. Buy one.
Think about it: how many adults are going to pay $600 for something that restricts the use of their car, good idea or not? But I'd personally pay that much for something that TELLS ME if I'm about to break the law.
Such a device would be a powerful educational tool for people--they'd actually learn what .08 means in terms of their subjective experience! A lot of people have several drinks and think "oh, I feel good to drive," but if they had an easy way to check this against "reality" (their BAC) they might develop a much healthier attitude about it.
Trying to restrict the use of somebody's car is kind of a silly idea for a lot of reasons (say they're waiting for their friend to pick them up and want to use the heater while they listen to music, for example) but I feel like increased awareness and some kind of concrete reality-check couldn't hurt and would probably save lives.
I'm waiting for a car that can be steered with your teeth! Then we wouldn't need car keys, all we need to do is sink our teeth into a steering wheel and the onboard computer will authenticate. It could check for alcohol too, or maybe even brush our teeth as we drive; thus eliminating those pesky doctors. People that don't have any teeth left will obviously pay for their crimes, forever lecturing to children on the need to correctly maintane their teeth.
But by golly, s/teeth/hands/ or s/teeth/eyes/
without prejudice
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Another problem with drunk driving, is that a lot of people feel that there is no other option in getting home. In the city I live in, I noticed there is a lot of people against people being drunk (not out-of-control drunk either mind you that, even if not enough to drive). First off, city buses don't run at night, so no one can use a bus to get home. Taxis, have a reputation of reporting their drunk patrons to the police, and walking home is usually not an option since a police officer would most likely consider you a "Suspicious Person," then ticket you for public drunkeness. So overall, the public needs to be more supporting of programs that do offer rides, and urge city councils to let buses run longer.
wow man, doomsayer extereme!
All that doom and gloom, OR they could be pretty standard, universal, very reliable, available in most places... do you feel that your air bags break down all the time and set off sensors, etc?
yes, i realize this is applicable to the ignition system, but so are alot of things that work jsut about every day just fine.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
It's a priveledge, fetterd by many rules and regulations, including an allowable limit of alcohol in your bloodstream.
The patent text shows that the inventor thought of gloves. One embodiement has the user wearing gloves with sensors, another the steering wheel needs periodic contact for the engine to keep running. US Patent Text from uspto.org
Why not have a camera that points to the passenger seat that sends the image it sees to a computer? The image would then be analyzed using a sophisticated algorithm which determines how ugly the chick you picked up at the bar is. If she is far uglier than most of the women you pick up, the car automatically knows that you are way to drunk to drive and refuses to start.
> If I had to go to jail when my kid killed someone under the influence, I would have had one kid instead of five, and spent more time on that one kid. If I can't afford the time, maybe I am not qualified to have kids at all?
I'm all for parents trying to educate their children correctly, but that's a recipe for disaster if I ever saw one: parents becoming hyper-protective by fear of prison, severely damaging the children' capacity to lead normal lives and probably leading to extreme behaviour in reaction by a fair number of them. No thanks.
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what happens when it's not alcohol?
- It is simple to make something complex, and complex to make it simple
http://www.alcoholfacts.org/CrashCourseOnMADD.html #Back26
I see this as maybe needed for the few repeat offenders, and not the general population. It is a little extreme, and might be best applicable for those extreme cases where the idiot just doesnt learn.
It could also be available, like the portable keychain analyzers, to people who would like to know themselves. I know I dont trust my judgement all the time when I'm drunk, but its too late when I wake up with her!!!
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
If policy is made without looking at such concerns, you've got bad policy.
I forget what 8 was for.
interesting idea but this is not a solution. the bottomline is that ppl have to be responsible for their own actions.it's sad that this happen far to frequently but in the end it's not up to techology (who foots the bill anyhow?) but up to the individual. they made a choice to drink in the first place and I dont want to hear whines about a hard life, socio-ecomionic issues, etc, hard lesson learned but we need to help others learn from these unfortunate experiences.
Step out of the box and enjoy life
Don't think of this as a method of keeping drunk people from driving cars (enough possible exploits have already been posted here) but rather as a device to allow people to determine if they're really as sober as they think they are when they step into the car. I would actually welcome a way to know if I'm approaching the legal limit when I get into my car that doesn't require getting pulled over first.
Do you think anyone's told him its not going to work and that breathalysers are already here and are harder to trick? Maybe if it added fingerprint scanning and electrical resistance testing to make sure you were really putting your hands on it.
At the end of the day, its totally your fault because you're the one who parks the car sober and walks into the bar.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
It is wrong to rule out that there are participants to slashdot that are blind. Not to say, blind trolls. The picture authentication code that requires interpreting a series of random letters in a deformed image to post on slashdot could as well be causing blind slashdot participants from posting their complaints! That is verry astounding! As for me, it takes me average of two tries to interpret the image. Once, I had to reload the page anew because the letters in the image was absurd and impossible to see. Think of the blind people...
To confirm you're not a script,
please type the text shown in this image: RIWNZTI
without prejudice
So, in order to circumvent:
Steering wheel version: Wear some gloves
Glove version: Don't wear gloves
I'm a firebreather. I was just doing a show...
Oh. Hands? I used them in my show!
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
This is just another case of technology trying to compensate for bad parenting. Seriously, why couldn't I just wear gloves to foil the whole system? Oh how about this, why don't we make special gloves that can detect intoxication. Yeah, that will end drunk driving.
It sounds like this could at least provide a continous check that a drunk person is not operating the vehicle. I'd be in total favour of this over the current DUI mandated breath systems... although i don't know how i feel about forcing it into everyone's cars. However, I do know how I feel about putting first time offenders behind bars for a weekend (we don't do this in Ontario; any States (or other Provinces) have harsher penalties than a slap-on-the-wrist fine?)
It would be better to just require people to wear an implant that monitors your BAC. That would be connected to a central database. Your car would be kept on record too and it would send out a signal whenever you try to turn it on. Then, the central monitoring station would check your drunkenness against whether your car was started. This would allow the police to keep drunk drivers off the road better than some steering wheel sensor.
Of course, there's probably something wrong with this idea, I just don't know what it is yet.
TFA doesn't exactly say how it works, but would it be possible to fool the sensor by wearing gloves or using some hand lotion or something?
If the sensor works by checking the pH of the skin, a lot of things could throw it off (false positives/false negatives). If it works by checking the galvanic properties of the skin, would sweat or lack of sweat not throw it off? If it is looking for a specific molecular signature, wouldn't a good scrubbing of the hands with soap and water just before starting the car not get rid of it?
If all these issues are foolproof, there is still the factor of the alcohol permeating the skin. I'd assume it would take a little while for the alcohol (which has a fairly low boiling point btw, so how much of it would remain on the skin at any given time) to work its way through the dermis and then through the epidermis.
I'm not certain all legally intoxicated drivers would have enough alcohol on their skin to trip the sensor, but perhaps those who could barely stand could be better served with a simple reflex test (get the driver to push and hold one button, wait random amount of time, turn on a light, calculate how much time it takes the person to let go of that button and push a separate button, repeat 10 or 20 times, compute an average and compare it with that driver's norm).
The 'blow in the tube' type checks the alcohol being expelled from your lungs. Since it checks the blood/alcohol level, it's a direct path from the blood to your breath through the lungs and is hard to fool. I don't know how well this through the skin version could realistically work.
Fun. So you go to visit a relative in hospital, and do the alcohol handrub thing going in and out of their room (MRSA is a big problem here in the UK), and go out to the carpark and your car refuses to start....?
OK, that's isopropyl alcohol rather than ethanol, but I doubt there's much specificity. I have noticed the alcohol smell lingers on the hands for quite a while; I think the gelling agents enable it to soak into the top layers of the skin. Good for killing MRSA; bad for starting cars with this feature fitted.
This wheel is in no way compareable to a seatbelt. It's more comparable to a catalytic converter or an O2 sensor.
The breathalyzer-style in car test is targeted at people convicted of a DUI. Thus, it has a very small target population. As soon as something similar occurs on all consumer vehicles, modifications to remove the wheel without consequence will pop up for those who want it. You can replace the emissions equippment on a car with commonly available kits. Your car PCU and the happy folks at the inspection station will be none the wiser. This wheel is no different.
All this works on the same flawed principles of DRM, though not in the same moral vein. An engine is a mechanical device, not a digital one. Slap a digital restriction on an inherently mechanical device, and it's a small step to remove it and make it run properly.
Folks (especially teenagers) who want to go fast have always removed emissions equippment for a few cheap extra horsepower. People who want to drive "after only a beer or two" will remove this wheel. Young adults are adept at changing and installing things on cars. Twenty-somethings, the group most likely to drink and drive (even above teenagers) also have the money to get the proper modifications done.
I don't disagree that it won't have some measureable effect. I do think the effects of mandating this particular bit of saftey equippment on every new car will go far into the effects of diminishing returns. I don't want to see the gap bridged from "specialized knowledge of engines required to circumvent" right into "commodity workarounds available" for the devices judges use to keep drunks off the roads.
Though I'm sensitive to the drunk driving issue, (indeed I lost an aunt and cousin to a drunk driver) , how is it that the law sees fit to punish someone based on a their propensity to commit damage? Certainly Drunk drivers cause more accidents than sober ones. But so do elderly drivers, minorities, and teenagers.
Though certainly people's intentions are good here, it would seem to me that we encroach on Minority Report territory when we start to arrest people based on crimes that we *think* will be committed by them. If a drunk-driver is swerving, it makes sense to me that he should be pulled over and detained seeing that he's demonstarted an incapicity to drive. But if the driver is otherwise coherent and is stopped by a police driver in , say, a DUI checkpoint - than who's to say the threat is at-all legitimate? The driver may well have outperformed the average driver in their journey home (or even their own sober driving standards).
So what am I not getting here? Am I wrong to accept that there's the potential for disaster when I venture out of my home? I don't expect that the world around me be absolutely sanitized before I enter it, this is the risk I take when I leave the comfort of my home.
This will be praised by many until that first lawsuit, you know the one where some man/woman jumps in their car to escape getting killed/raped by a gang or whatever merely because they had a beer and the car wouldn't start. Heck now we know why the car wouldn't start in those Jason horror movies, they were drinking..
Where I believe this will mostly be used is in DUI/DWI cases where they give back licenses to offenders so they can while going to those AAA meetings and pay quite a bit of money, use one of these in their vehicle in order to get their car back. Or people who specifically want it. Trying to put this in cars off the assembly line would be rather idiotic.
What happens if one were to rub rubbing alcohol on their hands?
I haven't read the patent but I'm assuming that the sensors work by measuring electrical resistance across your skin. Under normal circumstancs the resistance from gloves and covers probably don't fall into the same range as human skin so it would register as "no hands" to the sensor, provided it's designed sanely.
I never said I was smart, I just said I was smarter than you
What if you just put on after shave and touch the steering wheel? Or if say you were cooking something with wine and got some wine on your hands? Would it still keep you from driving?
Unless there's a special shield law, the first time someone gets drunk, gets behind a car with one of these, and it doesn't say "you are drunk" and/or disable the car, and someone is hurt or killed, the manufacturer will be dragged into the resulting lawsuit.
The mere threat of this possibility may deter manufacturers, or may cause them to keep prices high so they can buy insurance to cover this possibility.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This screws the regular driver, while hampering the drunk little or none
Have someone else start the car comes to mnd as the first workaround.
Wear gloves. What? No gloves? Oh that will go well in the northern climes. 10 below zero and my car won't start unless I take my gloves off? Yeah...that's a car I won't buy.
I'm no fan of big-brotherly ideas,
It appears you are.
I didn't read TFA, but this sounds dumb. If you're going to drive drunk, you're usually not too concerned with questions like "am I too drunk to drive?" or "am I legally intoxicated?" So in that respect it offers no assistance to drunk drivers or their parents.
And as a method of actually preventing the driver from using the car, that's not gonna happen. All it takes is a pair of gloves. Worse yet, it may actually backfire, when the drunken individual tries to circumvent this system, leading to an even MORE dangerous situation. Like say they use their shirt or jacket to hold the steering wheel, which of course is going to further degrade their driving skills.
Finding a way to prevent drunk drivers from driving their cars is a good and important idea, and it's good that someone's trying to make something like this. Ultimately this idea doesn't seem effective though. Maybe it will motivate someone else to come up with something though.
studies have found that people who did a lot of binge drinking when they were kids develop a kind of resistance to alchohol whereby they are immune to its depressive effects (i.e. they retain their adolescent response). they are also at least an order of magnitude more likely to be chronic alcoholics as adults.
this change in brain chemistry explains why many severe alchoholics can drink all day and still function normally, it also validates the grandparents assertion to some degree--its quite possible that his brain chemistry has a greater resistence to alchohol (not that this excuses one from driving over the limit but who knows, it might be admissible evidence in a trial given an objective test).
If you're going to circumvent, do it in style:
Steer with your knees.
Not only does this releave you from having to detect the correct version, but it also leaves your hands free for drinking coffee, eating twinkies, communicating with other drivers, and adjusting your wadriving equipment.
First of all, none of us are drivers.
:D
A "driver" is a thing. A man is not a thing. Compare with a golf driver, screw driver, software driver, et al.
Corresponding to true English grammar, for every "driver" there is a "drivee". A man sitting in a seat only serves to manipulate whatever driving force there is that influences the drive-train or driving mechanism.
Declaring anyone as a "driver" is a pleading, no less a confession, but declarative regardless of the fact at hand. For purposes of regulation per certain sentences, you a "driver" is the scope of subject matter jurisdiction of whatever chartered entity has been graced by the people to act as an agent for government in enforcing those rules. Same effect, a senior title to thing is often not declaring the nature and use of that thing; it is just an instrument for the holder in due course to exhibit for anyone to establish a claim against him. Nothing is a Motor Vehicle until it is declared for such purposes; hence exchanging a Title (Bill of Sale) for a Certificate of Title from the DMV thus redeclaring the property in dispute for commercial use as a Motor Vehicle or whatever the regulation scope is effective.
Historically, people were proper to apply the rules of the road as having effect on the sea and on land; territory has always same reference to the rolling ocean as area that is traversed upon by a vessel or vehicle and no different than soil. Herein these united States of America, "Department of Motor Vehicles" or whatever organization in your area hails as, appeared on about 1950 without a constitutional mandate; it's there in corporate form, not a part of the governmet but what powers are indirectly delegated by certain people by its charter.
I have in my posession a book titled "PILOTING AND SEAMANSHIP, CHAPLAIN" and I can attest that I am not a thing. Referencing this common knowledge, there are many terms referencing to the role performed by a man as either a helmsman, pilot, skipper, navigator, captain, or highest as commodore. Thus, as is the right of the people to not delegate powers elsewhere, by acting without declaring to a foreign entity; from time to time I am not less than performing as Helmsman under the direct mastery and command of Jesus Christ.
Remember, a man is not a thing (driver). Part of taxation/regulation is to stop lawlessness; people that go around declaring/confessing that they are not a man is questionable activity equate to multiple personality disorder; you are held accountable to your testimony, even though you are truly the testator. How many times have you been read someone else's rights in the form "What you say, can and will be used against you in a court of law" and you did not immediatly protest someone selling codes of rights to you? If a person does not derive rights from its self (god), then it is buying rights from another. Perhaps, that the man (you) already possessed those rights to direct the movement of thing (car) on the highways and biways for having claim by paying to service those highways and biways, you incriminate yourself that you are not a part of that original estate.
Do you see the trickery now? It's nothing that common English grammar can solve. I know to have made some grammar errors above, but that you comprehend my intent it is forgivable; thus you to are forgivable to exit from being a "driver" as though underneath a car and turning the drivetrain with bare-handedly (slavery). You can take that to your piggy bank and squat on it!
without prejudice
I think there should be passenger-side gloves that the girl has to put on to make sure you aren't taking the wrong one home, and to not let you out of the parking lot until she leaves.
I know this is going to seem crazy, but if the goal here is to prevent people from driving while they're not safe to drive, why use such an indirect means as testing blood alcohol level through skin contact on the steering wheel? Why not just test reaction time and mental ability?
It seems that, probably for less money than it costs to create some elaborate chemical sensor, you could put a device that flashes up different colors or shapes or something and makes you smack one of (say) three buttons corresponding to what you see. Then it measures your error rate and reaction time, and if you aren't mentally capable enough -- for whatever reason (be it fatigue, alcohol, antihistamines, illegal drugs, low blood sugar, anger, or merely preoccupation with something that prevents you from concentrating) -- then you can't start the engine.
...who would be better served by a pocket breathalyzer. If THAT fails, at least you can still drive your car. It's probably a lot cheaper, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Edumacation, schmaducation, you just take the fucking gloves OFF.
The only way that this would work is if you put it in the KEY. Last time I checked, none of us hold on to the steering wheel while turning on the car.
So anyway, really cool invention, but PUT IT IN THE KEY!!!
Under $4,000 for the car, but gas milage 1/3 of today's cars.
Oh, and did I mention no air conditioner, FM radio, speed control, air bags, ABS breaks, or other modern safety equipment? I don't think it had seat belts either.
You get what you pay for, and it's sometimes GOOD to have mandatory minimums for products, especially when it comes to safety.
Not so sure about the alchohol-detecting steering wheel, but I am happy Congress mandates seat belts and air bags.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Dude, sober up. ;)
You know what?
The article seems to imply that this tool should be useful to prevent someone from driving, and maybe rental car companies and the like would go for something like that. On the whole, though, it seems unlikely that anyone intent on actually driving the car won't be able to fool it. Unless it's forced on them by an overbearing government, it seems the people who this might prevent from driving are unlikely to have it installed in the first place.
I think that this sort of tool would be much more useful for someone who's already responsible enough. I can certainly see this being used as a very helpful indicator, similar to the audial beeping that can be set to go off if the car starts drifting too fast.
The vast majority of people who I know are responsible drinkers. If a sensor in a car reminds them that they're not fit to drive, they'll find some other way to get home, or dial up a driver service if necessary. I doubt they'd want to pay US$600 for it, but if mass production brought the price down and manufacturers started including it as an extra that simply provided a warning instead of trying to lock down the car, I'm pretty sure it'd get used.
IMHO, the placement of this sensor is completely worthless. By the time an intoxicated individual thinks to check his blood alcohol content (BAC), he will already be behind the wheel, and be unable to make a good decision regarding his ability to drive. This is because the convenience of already being behind the wheel may influence. As such, this sensor adds no benefit to an intoxicated individual. BAC tests should be placed somewhere away from where an intoxicated individual can cause harm
When did this go into effect? I've never encountered the picture authentication when posting here. (including today)
... people to drive on the edge of the legal limit?
Stupidest idea ever.
Can it tell the difference between human and other animal skin (I knew those guys with pickups at bars had their dogs with them for some reason) ?
Does it have a temperature sensor (for all those anatomy types who work in cadaver labs) ?
I've always thought that any establishment with a liquor license should be required by law to have a regularly inspected breathalyzer available for its patrons. Anyone who questions how much they have had to drink can simply ask to use it.
I'm sure most people would not drive drunk if they were sure they were over the legal limit. However most people have no idea what a 0.08 feels like.
If you are caught drunk driving, your license will be suspended for 12 months and you get a 600 USD fine (minimum 1st offense sentence). However, for roughly 1400 USD more (for 8 months) you can have a device installed on your car that will allow you to get your license back after 3 months. For the car to even start, you have to blow in the device and it checks your alcool level. Random checks can even happen while you're driving. You then have a certain amount of time to blow in it again else the engine will stop. What's expensive with this kind of device is the calibration since you need to have it checked every 2 months. I'd be surprised the device this guy came up with dont need any calibration since blood alcool content has to be checked against an alcool sample in the device for it to give accurate readings.
...and groovy tunes.
Assume for the moment you could build a device that could accurately read the driver's impairment level from any source - alcohol, drugs, sleep deprivation, cell phone, nudie magazine, screaming kids in the back seat, whatever. Assume for the moment this device is failure proof, fool proof, and cannot be misled.
Now, there are two primary use cases for this device:
In this case, the person it will be checking has proven they are willing to accept responsibility for their actions, and so the need for the device is fairly minimal - such a person is likely already going to limit their driving if they have been chemically altered, and all this device is going to do is allow them to drive when the are a little altered, as they will not have to leave the "safety margin" they otherwise would have left.
In this case, you open up the whole barrel of worms of legal rights, but most importantly the person being checked will either be
www.eFax.com are spammers
I never drink. I mean I never drunk in my life, why the hell would I want a device like this on my car? I don't have any kids and I wouldn't give my car to anyone, why would I ever want to have a device that costs money and can break etc. installed in my vehicle?
No fucking way.
You can't handle the truth.
...in restrooms of any restaurant or bar or building that sells alcoholic beverages. these will measure the alcoholic concentration of your pee and with a sign next to it stating what the legal limit is for you to be able to drive.
;p
but then this may create competitions on who can reach the highest alcohol concentration in their blood
HD Trailers
"What's to stop you from just wearing gloves"
It could require you to touch it, first.
That is besides the point, though. Just because it could be thwarted doesn't mean it'll be thwarted every single time. Heck, commiting a crime without leaving fingerprints is easy to do, but people still leave them around anyway. People STILL get busted because their face was caught on security cameras that are in plain view. In this case, the person thwarting it is really only guilty if they're drunk in the first place. How smart do you expect them to be, then?
"Derp de derp."
"...spent 12 years developing his sensor after his then-teenage son crashed into a utility pole..."
My son turns 20 in August. Drive drunk? He wouldn't think of it. Ride in a car with someone who's been drinking? Not on your life.
Why not? Because any imaginable consequence short of death is no match for the sure and true knowledge and belief, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that his fathers reaction and response would be WAY WORSE (from his POV).
It's a PITA to set and enforce boundaries for your kids, but it's a lot more responsible than buying half-assed gizmos to take the place of parenting.
an affliction of the conscious caousing one to devote all ones time and energy to creating a gizmo, which had it been available, purchased, and employed by you, would have avoided some calamity resulting from your indifference at the time.
Can this differentiate between someone piss drunk and someone that just spilled a bottle of rubbing alcohol? What about overspray from acohol based cleaning products, or NyQuil spills? How about hand wipes with alcohol in them, or aftershave, or any of the other completely innocent reasons for alcohol to get on your hands?
This article is *very* light on details. It doesn't say if it detects physiological changes such as heat rate, or if it detects alcohol in sweat, or anything about how it detects alcohol consumption. Any obvious way this could check, could plausibly have false positives from things many of us do every day. I'd be seriously concerned with how this device filters out false positives.
The identities in following transcripts are false and intended to prot- *hic -protect my character.
John Doe: Haallllo Pr0n*Star tee-hee *hic
(a sexy female voice manifests)
OnStar: I am here for you, Gregory^H^H^H^H^HJohn Doe
John Doe: Yeeaaaah, my car steering-wheel ignition system is mal-functioning a-gaaaaaain today: *hic it...don't...start, and the mechanic appears to have failed to fix it in the last recall. *hic
OnStar: I can bypass the steerwheel authentication and start the car for you. There is a hidden breathalizer in the glove compartment box that wasn't made known in the manual. Give us a sample and I'll start your car.
John Doe: F*ck, where's my spray bottle *hic
OnStar: excuse me?
John Doe: I mean, these *hic friggin natz; I'm gonna spray them with something that'll send 'em back to hell. *hic
OnStar: 0% alcohol, you're car will start shortly. Thanks for using On*Star.
John Doe: Yeah, and you thought I *hic I wouldn't get this car started. Come here you goddam Kangaroos. *hic I'm coming for yuh again!
without prejudice
Yeah it would be real fun to press some buttons 10-20 times every time I get in my car to go to work, to the store, so visit my friends. No wait. It wouldn't.
Philosophy.
His kid gets injured driving drunk and gets brain damage. He works on a device that will alert a driver that they are drunk, possibly preventing needless injuries and deaths like what happened to his son. Then he patents it, driving the cost up. Then he makes noises about wanting it standard on all cars, and they make noises about it being too expensive... Hey asshole, if you want to make an invention and make have it standard everywhere because you think it will benefit humanity, try NOT patenting it and driving the cost up so no one gets to use it, you piece of shit. If anyone should be in a position to rise above their greed and just share an idea with society, it OUGHT to be this guy. This just makes me fucking sick.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I'll be impressed when the steering wheel locks up every time the driver is talking on a cell phone.
Constitution is a bankruptcy protection charter. Those amendments, specifically the 10th, inducted reservation of rights to "States" and then referenced to an uncertain and unspecific "the people" as opposed to "We, the People". Check your grammar, it will take you far! In the original "state" charters, not that federal "State", union/cahoots was not allowed; the Constitution was a condition to help ease the collection of debt by creditors. Hence state, your condition of servitude.
As far as rights go, it has nothing adue with drive other than the theory to not trespass or offend anyone and be honerable to the contracts you make. You have a duty to movement, friend. Any way you cut the wee bunny, it doesn't change the fact that education is what changes the verry tense and comprehension of a state Constitution enough to stretch it out of proportion by lawyers and greedy bankers that covet your property and you securing a blessing they want to collect on.
Your only refuge and castle to competing with other bankers is either truth or religion. Did you not remember that religion is what founded the church-state and it can't be separated; all law is a matter of religion.
I went the Jesus Christ route; nothing else matters, but the truth. Someone said you need a privilege to drive, you need to redress them for their Libel of Review for implicitly declaring and curing quiet title on your actions under the guise of a statutory (alien) schema. You will never find the true defenition of the word "constitution" in an recent dictionary, so you need to look up those taxanomic words by each syllable and compare the closest assembly to what is being fraudulently represented or construed Constitution. Consider the word "constitutor" is someone that re-assigns debt, no less. According to the Consititution of the original-estate, a privilege was granted to perform an activity that violates the law; steal, kill, covet, dishonor, irrational hate, monopoly, et al.
It all starts with truth and wicked people ask it your duty to protect a lie. Truth doesn't defend itself in court, and I hold court in grocery stores all the time when I need to trial a melon or onion for its worth.
Network Redundancy Administrator; Gregory
without prejudice
If he did it to help then why patent it? So I guess he did it for money to help people? That must be it.
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
I only see it when not logged in.
A car is a mechanical thing. A driver can operate its controls and move it around at speed. It is not the job of the car to evaluate whether that would be a good idea or not.
A computer is a calculation device. It is supposed to perform logical and mathematical operations for the user at great speed. It is not the place of the computer to decide whether or not it should perform them.
Trying to make machines police their own use will never work.
- But above all, a machine is supposed to perform a task. It is the person using the machine that is supposed to decide whether it's a good idea or not.
Trying to delegate that descision to the machine is merely treating the symptom and ignoring the real problem. The past has shown us that this rarely, if ever, works.This would be good if it was installed in the cars of drink driving offenders, like the current programs which install breath testers linked to the ignition.
But why should the vast majority of law-abiding people pay $600 to install something in their cars which will mostly be little more than a nuisance. Even worse breath testers of all types are notoriously unreliable unless calibrated regularly, which simply won't happen - how often do people get their speedo's calibrated?
I can't imagine anything more frustrating than a car that won't start because of some stupid fault in what is a very complex but unnecessary device. I can only shudder at the cost of getting something like that fixed - anybody who owns a car will know that even the simplest maintainance costs shit loads of $$$, let alone something this complex. Worse still will be when I'm sitting in front of the TV in the evening and hear of some drink driver who bribed a passer-by to start his car and then went on to kill someone at a pedestrian crossing. Or a drunk driver who had his mate-who-knows-about-cars bypass the system and then went on to kill someone etc.
Even worse would be a system that stops the car in mid-drive if it decides that you are drunk. Even if you're not on a freeway or in a tunnel it can be very dangerous to kill the engine of a modern car due to the sudden drastic change in the steering and braking systems due to the loss of power. I know of someone who sideswiped a guard rail in a car that was known to have engine problems for no other reason than it lost power at a point where the road was curving.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
Ralph Spoilsport: but It was COLD OUTSIDE - like 20 below - what am I supposed to do? Let my flesh stick to the frozen wheel?
The Judge: Look, if you don't answer the question, we can't persecute you to the fullest extent of the law! Now, what were you doing with that woman?
RS: Oh, that was no woman, that was Bottles! Doesn't she count?
Officer O'Malley: Only to ten.
RS: You people are nothing BUT A PACK OF CARDS!!!
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I wish breathalyzers were much more widespread. 9 months ago I moved from Texas to Australia (Victoria), where the legal blood alcohol level is .05, compared to .08 in Texas (which only recently was lowered from .10).
.05 limit.
Basically, without having a way to measure your levels, no one I know will take the risk (which is great). All of my friends simply walk or take a cab. It's impossible to guess if you are too drunk to drive with a
What I found even more surprising is why bars don't simply have breathalyzers installed for their patrons. I've heard some do, but I haven't seen it anyhwere. Perhaps it creates some difficult legal problems for them? You can buy handheld breatholyzers here in Australia for about $150 USD... someday I would love to get one.
On a sidenote, one drunk evening out, I walked/stumbled to the local police station to ask them to test me, and they wouldn't. I was pretty disapointed, lol.
... if you had kids and you wanted to protect them and you could VOULNTARILY put it on your car.
Or perhaps it could be required for only those proven to have driven drunk.
But not on my car, thanks.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
- Son dies in car crash from drunk driver.
- Angry father invents some way of de-authorizing drunks from starting cars.
- ???
- Invention is widely adopted and becomes a standard piece of the automobile.
As you may guess, step 3 always fails. Any fucking moron can invent a thingamajig that tries to discriminate between a drunk and a sober person starting the car. That's not hard. The hard, Hard, HARD thing is getting this "great idea" {scoff} into automobiles such that the drunk can't avoid it through:- Not installing it in his car.
- Not driving an equipped car to the place he gets drunk at.
- Not removing or bypassing it when he's sober.
Etc.There's just nothing to see here. I'm sure a news article features one of these sorry fuckers every couple of years or so, as some sort of twisted or macabre "Human interest" story. But nothing will come of it since there are much larger issues involved than invention. For example, we still haven't invented a way to positively strap down car occupants in case of a crash. All seating belt systems can be countermanded in some way (the simplest way being: just don't "buckle up").
Until we figure out how to secure the bodies of car occupants, we will have no success WHATSOEVER in getting a car to distinguish between a drunk and a sober operator.
PERIOD!
* The guy in MA came up with a dashboard-mounted dial that was basically a switch. If you had the patience to turn the dial such that a visible, internal large metal ball was balanced between two metal contacts, the car would start. His theory was that a drunk had no such patience or coordination. I didn't have the heart (then) to tell him that no one would stand for having such a fucking device in their cars -- and that they'd rip it out pronto if so.
P.S. Look! LOOK! Watch me invent!: Put a breathalyzer in each new car, and pass a law requiring them installed in all old cars. Viola! WOW -- that was EASY! All it'll take is probably $2000 per car! Luckily for me (Mr. Smartguy Inventor Man), I never have to factor in real-life things like costs, legislation, and of course the problem of liability when someone tries to use an equipped car in an emergency and my SobeRoad{tm} device stops them from operating the vehicle. Wow! I'm sooooooo fucking SMART! {scoff}
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
It's already been done...& threadID=14566&start=30&tstart=0 ...or just fucking Google for "auto breathalyzer ignition".
http://www.whynot.net/view_idea?id=830
http://forums.autoweek.com/thread.jspa?forumID=31
http://www.wnyt.com/x3458.xml?ag=x156&sb=x183
I thought my morning paper was stupid for picking up this story as "news"...I can't believe SlashDot got trolled too...
a lot of you seem to be missing the fact that possibly if it detects you being over the legal limit, the device could be used to either disable your car or limit it to a rediculously low speed, so that even if you plowed into a tree you'd likely survive.
it could really almost eliminate deaths due to drunk driving. and dont go on about "well how will the person get home if their car is disabled" because if they are over the limit they have no right to drive, and they deserve to wait hours before the car will allow them to drive again.
Just kidding, I don't drink and drive. Well, maybe soda or coffee, but you know what I mean.
DAMM: Drunkards Against MADD Mothers.
I know for certain that I saw this technology demoed in an old black & white documentary from the 50's. It just never caught on. People won't pay extra for the burden of breathing onto a sensor to see if their car will let them drive.
It's too easy to hack.
I don't see how can this prevent driving to a drunk kid with a pair of plastic gloves while driving. We all know how stupid one can be while drunk.
Pardon me, but this is Simply Useless(TM), it will only work with responsible people that don't need it, to begin with.
Surely this is only useful if you're too drunk to remember to put on your driving gloves before you touch the wheel!
[sig] "Alo, Salut, sunt eu, un haiduc..."
... numa numa hey, numa numa numa hey! ... */singing*
*singing*
Free as in mason.
Then you touch it with your elbow, or a moistened tissue, or wet leather gloves, or just about anything that will fool it into starting.
Why not just wear gloves? I really don't see the point in this..
Never touch an Irish man's Guinness!@#
Volvo is already shipping cars with alcometer builtin to the ignition system,
if the driver has too high blood alcohol level, the ignition refuses to start the car.
I'm not sure if this system tests the blood level through skin, but it sounds bit similar to me.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Oh great, another sob story from a loser who wants to be able to drive drunk and get away with it.
This isn't a reinstatement of prohibition, you ass. This is to stop people like you, who think they're uber and can drive after 'just a few' (3 in 2 hours for dinner? holy shit, order a glass of water instead, you alkie) from murdering others sharing the road.
Pattents are so annoying.
Dont know if someone already has, but think if someone take patent on the seatbelt then others not allowed to manufacture it, and millions of poeple die in car crashes.
Patents are evil!
I don't need a sensor to tell me if I'm drunk. I have my own test. If I can find the keyhole on the car's door without making enough effort to get tired and fall asleep once I'm in the car, I can drive!
Way back when I used to work at a grocery store, I couldn't count on two hands the number of times per week the beer truck would pull into our dock with a ton of broken bottles (sometimes multiple shipments per day), and it was my job to not only unload the stuff, yet clean it up afterward. While I didn't mind the work necessarily, I did end up smelling of beer six ways from Sunday, and (believe it or not) I don't drink. I wonder if Mr. SmartCar would let me drive home, even after scrubbing up several times. Somehow I think not.
Tell me what the motivation is for someone who likes to drink (socially or otherwise) to buy this, or a car that has this? The only other option would be for it to be required by law for everyone (or perhaps convicted drunk-drivers?) then they better make damn well sure it works correctly with no false positives.
And they said zombies weren't real!
Follow the money. Read about this cottage industry here.
I don't want to pay for a $600 gadget that can be defeated by a $10 pair of gloves! Cars are expensive enough already without sticking worthless tech into them for the sake of putting on appearances.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
...Famous last words!
GLOVES? Enough said.
And I have alcohol-based stuff on my hands? I cant drive my car?
Or what if youre helping a drunk friend get home? As soon as you handle him/her, your hands are alcoholic and you cant drive.
Theres no deciding factor about a drunk person except the percentage of alcohol in the bloodstream, so the only reliable possible solution is to have an rfid device under the drivers skin which measures alcohol and relays the data to the car enabling it to start.
Now theres an idea.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
4 beers in two hours would put most people over 0.05%, if not 0.08%
I think I see the problem here, mate. You can't handle your drink. Or not! Let's see. The TAC has been studying the effects of drinking for quite a few years now, and has a system of standard drinks. I see that a 330ml bottle of Lowenbrau beer, at 5.2%, constitutes approximately 1.3 standard drinks. There is now a standard drink equivalent marked on every bottle containing alcohol.
The recommended drinking rate, in order to stay safely below 0.05, is TWO standard drinks in the first hour, and one standard drink every hour after that. Certainly, it's not a perfect system, but with the labelling on the bottles, it's pretty good. I think, personally, 4 beers in two hours would put you right on the edge.
We don't have the "walk a straight line" tests here. That seems to be slightly biased against the arthritic and cripples, IMHO.
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
If the sensor registers "no hands", it shouldn't allow the car to start. If there was an interlock with a driver seat sensor, it definitely shouldn't start if it detects "butt in seat, no hands".
Lots of people in the US want privacy and so live out in the middle of nowhere. miles and miles to the next store....or even house!
Of course...they should have thought about how much more important their car was to them....before they broke the arbitrary and injust DUI laws.
Blar.
device does not address sleepy drivers, you can be a little drunk and still fall asleep at the wheel, for 600 dollars that's not acceptable. also how does this work
I remember when they told you to pour it out. Now they want to point a gun to your head and fine the hell out of you.
It makes me want to get drunk!!