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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.
I would hope that as a bartender you are aware of the concept of washing your hands :)
I can't be the only person who immediately contemplated swabbing their friends steering wheels with rubbing alcohol.
No driving for you. ONE YEAR!
this is true.
we had a big new years party 4 or 5 years ago and we bought a breathalizer so people could see what they would blow.
we used it for fun and gags, but ultimately, at the end, it saved people's lives (perhaps) and possibly even a few DUIs. towards the end of the party as the ones standing started to leave, they would blow and everyone that was over the legal limit called a taxi or worked out a ride with someone well under the legal limit.
but this device is not the savior to teen drunk driving (which sounds like the reasoning behind the invention) - although it may cut down some incidents by 20% or so.
bottom line, you just can't prevent people from being stupid - and it's not funny because most of the time it means the loss of life of another instead of the stupid one that caused it.
do you have shinyfeet?
$600 per car is not a lot to spend to ensure road safety.
Depends: on a $300 Yugo, it might not be such a good idea...
Then again, with a Yugo, you're very safe in the first place, since the bus driver is never drunk.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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."