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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."
Having a light on your dashboard telling you that you're objectively too drunk to drive will probably help reduce drunk driving for rational people who overestimate their limits.
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.
Don't you ever get tired of looking for ways to blame the parents. You do realize that no matter how much you try to educate someone there is always the possibility that no matter what they will end up doing exactly what you told them not to. Children make mistakes and the law does provide for punishment of the parents for their children's actions. This guy goes out and makes a tool that might be able to help the situation and you jump all over it. It does have uses beyond teenage drunk drives you know that right. It could be installed at the request of a judge after an ADULT gets convicted of DUI. Hell I could go out and buy one just in case I don't trust my own opinion of whether or not I'm drunk. It doesn't have to be just a tool for lazy parenting as you like to make it sound.
For the record I don't think it's lazy parenting, I think it's giving more tools to help parents. As Ronald Regan said "trust but verify"
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
It's a priveledge, fetterd by many rules and regulations, including an allowable limit of alcohol in your bloodstream.
I know I can go double the legal limit before I am impaired
That might be true, but it might also be the problem.
" It's causing unfair restrainment in a product we own."
It's unfair to you, it's more than fair for everybody else on the road.
Just remember, you own the car, you do NOT own the roads.
"Derp de derp."
How much do you weigh? 4 beers in two hours would put most people over 0.05%, if not 0.08%. If you're planning a long night out, you'll metabolize most of those first three beers in a few hours and your subsequent "maintenance" beer/hour won't cause a problem. However, if you're going out for a 2 hour dinner you're not going to have time to metabolize those first three beers before it's time to get in the car and drive.
Studies have shown that most people at 0.08% are still fully capable of driving, and that the legal limit should be 0.10% (as it was in most places of the US many years ago). The slow but inexorable lowering of the legal limit is tantamount to a reinstatement of prohibition in small steps. If you live in an area where no public transportation is available (sadly, a very large percentage of the US -- I can't speak to Australia, having never been there), 0.08% means you can maybe have one beer an hour, and then you're risking it due to inaccuracies in breathalyzers and road-side sobriety tests (the "walk a straight line" tests are designed to make you fail, regardless of your actual BAC). At .08 you can get away with having a drink or two and not run into any problems. At .05 I'd have maybe one drink the entire night. Any lower, and you just can't drink at all.
Once you can't even have one or two drinks for fear of getting a DUI on the way home, what's to stop them from starting in on other ways of reinstating prohibition? Make it illegal to be drunk on public transportation? Make it illegal to walk home drunk (already the case in many places where public drunkenness is a crime)? Just because the bars are still allowed to stay open doesn't make it any less like Prohibition. Maybe the teetotallers should get a life and stop trying to make everyone else stop drinking. Reinstate the .10% legal limit, and add tougher penalties if you feel it's necessary, but as things are right now even one drink when you're going to have to drive is just asking for years of pain from a bullshit DUI.
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 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.
Or how about you just don't drink and drive?
Heard of taxis? Have friends? There are plenty of ways to go out for the night, have a drink, and avoid driving home.
There's also nothing stopping you staying in and having a drink.
Maybe the idiots that think they can drive when they've "only had a couple" should get a life and stop trying to ruin others.
A
There's no normal excuse for drinking and driving - it's a proven and easily avoidable cause of a lot of accidents and deaths.
To get back on topic, would I want one of these steering wheels? To be honest, no - I don't ever touch my steering wheel unless I'm sober and I can't be bothered with the thing breaking, or failing to realise that it's not alcohol in my bloodstream, it's windscreen washer antifreeze that spilled while I was filling the car.
~Cederic