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Nissan Turns to Technology to Stop Drunk Driving
StonyandCher writes with a ComputerWorld story about new efforts by Nissan to reduce the danger of intoxicated drinkers through technology. A trio of new features installed in a prototype vehicle demonstrated this past week are designed to minimize the damage a drunk behind the wheel can cause. "The first [system] attempts to directly detect alcohol in the driver's sweat and gear shift lever. A second system in the car uses a camera mounted in front of the driver to monitor eye movement. If the driver is drowsy it triggers the seat belt to tighten and this movement will hopefully snap the driver out of their drowsiness or prompt them to take a rest. A third system monitors the path of the vehicle to ensure it's traveling in a straight line and not weaving about the road, as is common with a drunken driver."
... is to swab the gearshift sensor with alcohol - and TA DA; no car for you!
I really hope this doesn't ever become mandatory in new vehicles in the future. I don't want to pay $2000 extra for my car when I don't drink. But if it's not made mandatory, who would buy it?
bad for those of us with a lazy eye, use hand disinfectants, and weave to warm up our tires.
Will the car detect the alcohol on their hands (but not in their systems) and refuse to let them drive?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
"A third system monitors the path of the vehicle to ensure it's traveling in a straight line and not weaving about the road, as is common with a drunken driver"
Solution: Build environmentally-friendly, agrarian, energy-concious biodomes. Since man (and woman) will be at peace with nature and balance, they will only need to travel as far as their garden rather than to the work place or the pub (which require vehicles.)
Problem solved!
"The first [system] attempts to directly detect alcohol in the driver's sweat and gear shift lever."
Sorry Nissan, only my wife touches my gear shift lever.
Badum, tiss!
Thanks, I'll be here all week, enjoy the buffet, don't forget to tip your waitress.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Even russian guy is completely Ok, the car won't run due to detecting the alcohol percentage in his cloth since long usage. :-)
I am drunk off Johnnie Walker whiskey right now, and I am not going anywhere. I would rather be out with friends, but I am not going to risk others' safety.
What happened to personal responsibility, Renault?
'The first [system] attempts to directly detect alcohol in the driver's sweat and gear shift lever.'
Okay that's just stupid, there are many healthcare workers who use alcohol wipes and are going to get some on their hands. There are probably all sorts of circumstances where alcohol is going to end up on hands/the gear shift and screwing with the sensors.
Probably a bad idea. It will encourage drivers to drive drunk. Experience with ABS systems on cars indicates that it encourages drivers to brake more aggressively. This seems more of the same.
Drowsy driver detection systems have been around for a while, mostly on large trucks.
We're in an annoying period where vehicle control systems can help a bit, but aren't yet good enough to reliably drive cars automatically. That's getting close, though. A few more rounds of the DARPA Grand Challenge, in tougher situations, and we'll be there.
The first [system] attempts to directly detect alcohol in the driver's sweat and gear shift lever.
Uhm, quit attempting to detect alcohol in my "gear shift lever". I've already heard THAT line fifty times tonight, queerboy.
...about 90% alcohol?
The other two options sound more effective to me.
Anything that takes away functionality like the alcohol detecting system or software locks that limit horsepower or top speed based on car model are bad in my opinion. It seems like a perfect example of (mis)applying technology to solve a social problem. The second system mentioned seems like a good idea because you're providing the driver with useful information, I would prefer maybe an audio alert to the potential strangulation by my seatbelt, but that's just me. And car makers better have the sense to make this easy to disable should it become common place.
:)
Maybe I should just get into restoring cars that were made before the integration of microprocessors
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
I think that this would be an incredible time to mod the parent UPPITY.
I used rubbing alcohol to clean my gear shift
I don't want to encourage drunk driving, but I don't see it as the car manufacturer's responsibility to put this equipment in the car. I certainly don't want that equipment on my car (either at extra cost to me or not), and would view any car with it as being "less" of a product that I might want to buy. Put short, I wouldn't purchase such a vehicle. Period.
In addition, as the auto manufacturers start trying to determine if the driver is drunk or not, this might put them at a legal risk for any false positives or negatives. IANAL, but I'm assuming that the manufacturers of those breath analysis devices that the court forces convicted drunks to put on their cars are somehow indemnified or otherwise held blameless should the user find some way to defeat them. Because this is something ordered by the court, they may be exempt from legal liability. I'm not convinced that any car manufacturer would be so lucky if they start putting them on "production" vehicles. There are plenty of hungry lawyers ready to start some type of class-action suit on behalf of injured third parties. To this end, I say keep up the good work lawyers, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Just another case of "more nanny state, less personal responsibility."
Isn't it just like automobile manufacturers to include new and novel safety features and governments say "OOOO! Let's make all our cars have that!". Hasn't that been the case with first seat belts, then airbags, then ABS, then traction control, then side-curtain airbags, now this crap. You can't get a new imported car street legal in the United States anymore without having all this unnecessary junk installed first. I'll just stick with my seat belts and airbags. If you're not a dupe behind the wheel, most of these "safety features" will go unused.
Accident avoidance is all up to the driver and it is their responsibility to know whether they are "good to drive" or not. This gadget seems to me to be an in for Big Brother to tell me when I can and can't drive. On a hot sunny day, my hands are going to sweat profusely. Will that cause me to not make it to work on time? I serve alcoholic beverages to people and then give them a safe ride home as a DD. Does that mean that my passengers will have to drive themselves home because I may smell of alcohol? This system undoubtedly has its flaws. I'm just waiting for some government stooge to make it mandatory.
The game.
This is probably more useful for tired drivers than drunk drivers, as more people drive tired than drunk.
The other day, I was traveling down I-90 in Mass and I was pretty tired. At point point I think I closed my eyes for around 5-10 seconds, and snapped out of it and was half-way into the next lane. I stopped, got out and stretched, and finished my drive with the windows down (which did a good job of keeping me awake). Ok, sure, I *shouldn't have been driving in the first place*, but if the automatic system would have snapped me out of it when it saw me going into the next lane, or saw my eyes closed, that would have been a big help.
Gloves
As a practical joke, take a picture from the eye sensing camera's POV with someone in the drivers seat and eyes closed, then tape it over the camera eyehole. Constantly cinching seatbelt!
someone cleans their hand with those alcohol based hand sanitizers before hand?
i like the idea of snapping the seat belt if you seem to be drowsy, provided the threshold is set high enough that it really makes you say 'wow. i really am falling asleep here' and scares you that way, rather than happening over and over when you're slightly tired but still alert enough to drive, desensitizing you to it. of course like any system, you should be able to turn it off.
idea #1 is just going to be a stupid annoyance if you've had a drink, and have a false reading, where it won't let you start the car. and on the flip side, people will be a lot more likely to try and drive regardless of how much they've drank, and if the system says they're fine, then assume everything must be okay. i can see the jokes now.. having several beers before heading out and saying 'oh man we had better get going before we can't start the car any more!'. when you implement technological solutions to social problems, people generally stop thinking about the ramifications of what they're going to do, because if the system lets them do it, it must be alright!
idea #3 is also going to be nothing but an annoyance. frankly i swerve a lot more if i'm stone cold sober and therefore driving competently (you know, going around cars that are parking, double parked, turning, sticking out into an intersection, over in your half of the road so you have to play chicken, etc). if i've had a few beers, i'll drive what the speed limit sign says (rather than adding the "massachusetts 15"), and generally yield to people doing the aforementioned things.
any system in a car should be there to assist me, not hinder me, regardless of what i want to do (that's why i'm buying the car, you know). there are always going to be cases where people are willing to take the consequences of possibly breaking the law because they have an overriding reason. if a system wants to inform me of something so that i'm aware of it and can make better decisions, great. a system that actively prevents me from doing what i wish would obviously not survive in a true free market, and is therefore immoral.
What do you mean occifer? My car says I'm sotally tober.
The Schwartz space ain't from Spaceballs.
So I guess if you're going to drive drunk in a Nissan equipped with one of these systems, don't travel anywhere with curves?
...until I found out how much of a bad corporate citizen they actually are. I will never buy a Nissan or Infiniti vehicle because of this incident http://www.nissan.com/Digest/The_Story.php, nor will I recommend Nissan/Infiniti to any of my close circle of friends.
Just because you get modded "insightful" on Slashdot doesn't mean you actually are in real life.
my history teacher used to tell us about an old joke in kenya. when you see someone driving straight, you know he is drunk, because sober people swerve to get around the potholes.
It is inevitable this will turn into a system that disables the car completely, and alerts the police. How many learner drivers are going to be ID'd as drunk? here in australia you see learners all the time doing exactly what they discribed, meandering all over the road, braking and accelerating too quickly, etc. etc. And if you put a special mode in to avoid this people would just activate it when they are drunk. Or what about an emergency? What if you've been drinking a bit but need to get to the cops to tell them the terrorists have taken over then building? Or if your in a remote rural area and need to get soemone to the hospital? using technology in this way is very near sighted.
So Skulldilocks threw acid on the schoolchildrens' faces, cause somebody from the bible told her to do it!
I can drop a single drop of alcohol on your gear lever, and your car won't run for hours never mind what you do.
Enjoy.
My car deciding to tighten up the seat belt on me like that. I just see bad things happening.
You know, these kind of things seem inevitable in our future. Dogooders will always attempt to do good, which often requires stopping stupid people. Unfortunately, dogooders are often non confrontational, and will always prefer a technological, blanket solution - because lets face it, what can be an easier way to stop drunk driving that having the car tell if you're drunk and just not letting you drive. But I just can't see these things ultimately turning out to be good: sooner or later their will be no more drunk drivers, pedophiles, pirates, etc. and then what? Maybe I'm just to cynical, but I don't think it's going to be a rosy world of freedom and peace then.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
for drivers yakking away on their cell phone instead of watching the road.
Instead of promoting personal responsibility, let's make it easier for drunks to get behind the wheel of a car. That's a great idea right? Guys? Why is everybody leaving?
... how fun it was for the engineers to do testing on this contraption.
and if its good enough for senators, then its good enough for civilians.
Table-ized A.I.
Okay, so it detects that the driver is drunk. And the decision the car makes is to turn off access to the shift? Does it worry anyone out there that the car can override the driver? I mean, yes, if the driver is drunk, then probably the hunk of metal is better equipped to make decisions. But the first time this thing misfires there will be hell to pay.
And what happens if the drunk driver decides to drive around in first gear anyway? Will the steering automatically head towards the nearest embankment in an attempt to save time?
Also: Are people going to have to hit a button before they begin their journey to indicate either "Yeah, I might be wasted" or "No, I'm visiting my relatives and the roads out here weave all by themselves because the guy who laid the road was drunk, but that's no reason to punish me..."?
"Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"
Personally, I think that the alcohol detection systems are probably junk. Short of it being installed on a company vehicles (FedEx?) or as some punishment for a DUI, I don't really see the point. Even than, I doubt many shipping companies have alcohol problems so bad that it justifies such silly expenditures. It is pretty easy to tell if you are too drunk to drive, you don't need your car to tell you for you. Besides, a simple pair of gloves will happily void this system, while splashing alcohol on the steering wheel is a great way to piss off your friends.
On the other hand, the sleep detection system would be a godsend. If the price was right, I would happily get one of those things installed. I don't want it turning off my car in the middle of the highway, but tightening my seatbelt, beeping, or in some way warning me that I look like I am nodding off would be wonderful. Obviously, you would want a way to turn off the damn thing so that it doesn't confuse bobbing your head along to music with falling asleep, but so long as you can turn the thing off and it is relatively cheap, I think lots of people would go for it and get it installed voluntarily.
this system will no doubt require all 3 matches to slow the car and warn you that you might be in danger. weaving, plus eye movement and alcohol in your sweat no doubt indicates your. it won't just stop the car if you use hand wipes, all you geniuses spouting that are full of it.
the problem will start when some fucking moron manages to fool the system and has a crash anyway, and will use our current "don't blame me i'm the victim" culture to sue.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I'd cut out a seat belt that randomly tried to strangle me. I don't think it would take long for anyone to figure out that s pair of gloves would defeat sensing for alcohol in sweat. When I go drunk driving, I'm really hammered* -- it takes me a few minutes to get the car turned on, but I still don't swerve all over the bloody place. Who does that? The whole idea fails because most people would buy the bloody car in the first place. Second, it would probably take a small amount of effort to fully remove the restraints instead of avoiding them. * Most of a 66oz bottle of whiskey.
Treat drunk driving like a drug offense, confiscate the vehicle they are driving and sell it at police auction.
Oh great, more sensors and doodads to add weight to the car.
More weight means less fuel economy.
And collectively these things are really adding up (side airbags, side reinforcement, government-mandated design rules up the wazzoo, which is why all modern cars effectively look alike).
When can we say "enough is enough with all the safety features" and start trimming weight?
How many false positives do you think will be triggered from people who have just fueled the car? The more we move toward ethanol as the primary constituent of fuel, the more people are going to come into contact with it with their hands. Do you stop and wash your hands after fueling? I sure don't; gas station bathrooms are often nasty enough to make it a questionable move.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Do the seatbelts automatically tighten if Millhouse fidgets?
Disclaimer: I am a police officer in the US state of Florida. I make a lot of DUI arrests and specialize in traffic-related crimes.
If this works as advertised, it would be a wonderful way to deter the dangerous and all-to-common crime of DUI.
Of all these ideas, the eye movement cameras are the strongest indicators of impairment, but sound difficult to implement correctly. Sluggish, jerky eye movement and poor tracking is the single strongest indicator of impairment I look for when evaluating whether a driver might be impaired or not. If people with these signs were told by their vehicles not to drive, it would be one of the best things that could happen to traffic.
I'd be interested to see how the sweat sensors work out. That's not something we can conclusively detect with human senses for the purposes of courtroom testimony. No judge will allow a jury to hear an officer saying "he reeked of booze and was sweating alcohol right out of his pores."
Making it mandatory rubs me the wrong way, but mandatory for people *convicted* of alcohol-related crimes (DUI and under-21 alcohol use might be a good step) and minor drug possession crimes could have this mandatory on their vehicles in lieu of jail time.
People who cry fascism, just remember that DUIs don't involve police coming into your life and telling you what to do. It involves drunk people going out into the public, and recklessly endangering, maiming, and killing innocent people. Alcohol-related vehicular homicide is far, far more common than murder, but people keep acting like DUIs are "victimless crimes."
I'll be sure to tell that to the next family of a pedestrian I scrape off the road.
the automative clippey
Table-ized A.I.
I just can't be ok with something that subverts natural selection.
Laws and technology have gotten to the point where they completely harbor the likes of those who would normally off themselves in really stupid ways.
There's nothing wrong with these folks living, don't get me wrong. The problem occurs when they breed and make stupid offspring.
You can't take the sky from me.
just fart in it's face. it'll say you're full of shit, but it will start :)
Self-driving cars will never happen, at least not in the foreseeable future. The problem isn't that the technology and software won't be able to do it - it's that product liability will make it infeasible. No human or computer can always prevent a crash caused by another car running a red light. Yet almost certainly the computer's manufacturer would be sued in that situation, just because they have deep pockets.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
What about false positives?
Tighten the seat belt? Wouldn't an airhorn be more effective?
Does anyone trust a self-tightening seat belt?
Whatever happened to people taking responsibility for drinking?
While I find the intent of this noble... the fundamental flaw in this whole idea is simply...the vehicle acting on its own based on finding an impaired driver behind the wheel....
What happens when a driver has been drinking and is cruising through busy traffic? Not maintaining a strait line? Sweat detected on the gear shifter? What happens? The car puts you through a shutdown forcing you to stop? Unless the robotics are sophisticated enough to measure traffic, pull you over safely onto a shoulder which may or may not exist, this can spell disaster on the road.
I can see it now...rush hour traffic (yes...some people DO drink midday) and the general flow of traffic on a highway or neighborhood street is flowing fast. Suddenly the car in front of you shuts down or does something unpredictable because it detected a driver may be impaired and decides to act outside of normal human behaviour and creates a pileup.
Myself personally, I'd sooner rely on my instincts and observation to note that the car in front of me might have a drunk driver behind the wheel (which I have had the unfortunate occasion to note more than once), than have the added random factor of response due to mechanical takeover (did that make sense?).
The only real solution is to prevent the driver from even being able to start their car before getting on the road.
$2000 goes a reasonable way towards someone else doing the driving..
Insert
Warning! Dangerous blood levels detected in your alcohol. Please stop the car and get some sleep.
Alter the system so that it works with my mouse and stops me doing drunken bids on eBay, then I might be interested. *eyes pile of worthless crap in corner of room*
I better not clean my hands with ethanol hand towels then.
a technical solution to social and legal problem. Since the system can be fooled, and WILL be fooled, we need some other implements to stop drunk driving.
The main problem here is that, obviously, revoking your driving license won't deter you from driving, and neither will these funny gadgets, fines, AA sessions or whatever.
But there's a much simpler, and many times less intrusive way to make sure people don't drive drunk: Introduce corporal punishment. The moment motorists have a good chance to get caned for heavy traffic offenses like DUI, or repeatedly running red lights, using the cell phone without hands-free, this crap will stop. Make it mandatory, with at least 30 strikes, of somebody is badly injured because of disregard for traffic laws.
And don't come with 'that's cruel' or 'that's inhumane'. Especially if you have people which have been sent to a wheelchair because a motorist was drunk as a skunk or thought that other traffic regulations didn't apply to him or her.
I dont believe in giving up libertes for some imaginary increase in safety.
I also dont appreciate my car spying on me. And for the record, i dont drink at all.. let alone while driving and i still think this is a bad idea.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
the idiot that tried to turn me into street pizza back in 2000 was driving very erratically, as I saw him a while before he hit me. But he was also putting that Chevy Tahoe's engine to the max, and going FAST. But speed control eliminates the whole point of having a car... the gear shift alcohol-sensing lever may fare better. Of course this is not much good if it's only in Nissans and not the billion-odd cars already in the world. (I'm really not that bitter/angry about it now, despite the tone of this post.)
It's terribly ironic that this link/story comes just below the article entitled "Science: Brain Electrodes Help Injured Man To Speak Again." I hope none of you ever have to experience the many layers of horror for those involved in a person surviving a traumatic brain injury.
-- haaz.
I'm particularly excited about the swerving detection... that alone would eliminate 90% of SOBER drivers in my city.
How about a camera that can tell if the driver is a half-brained preppie trying to simultaneously talk on their Blackberry, do their makeup/shave, and is about to make a left turn from the right lane. It would be nice if the sensor could then activate a dash-mounted AK-47, but I'd settle for a wireless warning to nearby drivers. I can shoot the bastard myself.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
That just means they won't be sold in the US. Won't stop anyone else buying them.
No, I did not click the Back Button. Yes, I am behind a firewall. No, that did not accelerate my reactions to the superhuman speed enabling me to post within 11 minutes. WTF is wrong with the people behind this site that they write such stupid gibberish? Shouldn't this have been fixed about a hundred years ago?
to a social problem. I see no way of this failing. :-/
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
"...they're no longer accurate above about 0.20
And this new Nissan system will be? I can't imagine sweat sensors can be more accurate than breath. Some people sweat more, it varies with the weather, etc., etc.
Besides, I'm sure the real drunks will figure out how to change gear with a kleenex or something.
No sig today...
Would this system work with people who regularly use lots of alcohol-containing oral rinses?
Tee-hee, you are funny, OMG! LOL! Hey text me like NOW! Tee-Hee.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
How does this stop Lindsey Lohan?
welcome our new belt slapping^Wstrapping^Wtightening overlords.
But if all cars were computer-driven, you wouldn't have any running red lights.
At least in a perfect world with perfect programming you wouldn't.
So Nissan plans to role this stuff out by 2015. So thats only 8 years away, but 2015 still sounds awfully like the "future" to me. Since it appears that we're not going to get flying-conversions for our cars any time soon, can't we at least have smart cars and smart highways? Why do people still have to drive their cars? Is this the 21st century or not?
Unfortunately the fully autonomous bar is more probable than the fully autonomous car. Mostly for this reason.
I bought an automatic!
*rimshot*
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Dislike: It's just another example of trying to exchange annoyingly imperfect technology for imperfect human judgment. "It looks like you're trying to drive plastered! Would you like to: a) get out and try again later, b) go to the passenger seat and sleep it off, or c) have my onboard navigations and communications system tip off the authorities of your route?"
Like: Nissan Altima drivers are the worst on the roads when they're sober. Keeping them from driving drunk might help save others' lives.
Rather than all this fancy seatbelt tightening and stuff, just use the alcohol dectection to not allow the seat belt to buckle. This way if they do get into an accident we are sure they will not be the ones surviving.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Aside from issues with your use of hyperbole (which I hope it is), I would like to defend the parent and perhaps shed some light on the actions and decisions of those fully participating in society.
Sometimes when you're a grown-up, you perform certain actions that have an inherent risk. In fact, most of the actions you perform have some level of inherent risk, e.g. eating at a sit-down restaurant can lead to food poisoning, eating at McDonald's can lead to shame and indigestion, et al. Part of being a grown-up though is making responsible risk/benefit analysis about these decisions. Usually this means that you don't have to even consider the possibility (although real) of food poisoning from your favorite restaurant, unless there has been a spate of recent incidences that you are aware of.
When it comes to driving, we have to assess inherent risks due to a variety of factors including but not limited to:
1) The mechanical condition of our car, i.e. how certain our we that are brakes are good and will respond as we expect when we need them to, and also, the condition of our tires and are we going to be driving in conditions where a tire blowout would threaten our life, or the lives of others around us, etc.
2) The weather conditions, i.e. how less competent of a driver are we in heavy rain, or when the roads are icy, or when visibility is very low (fog)
3) Our physical/mental conditon, i.e. are we incredibly angry about something (we usually make poorer judgments when we are), or are we tired? and how tired are we (could be just a little bodily tired from a good physical workout, or could be that we're drowsy due to lack of sleep), etc.
In combination with all these inherent risks we weigh the benefits of the drive:
Are we returning home from a long absence to those who are worried about, and are deeply missing us? Or perhaps we are just going out for a drive because we have nothing better to do(people who don't know about /. still do this, I've heard). Or, as an extreme example, we're rushing a loved one to the hospital, where every minute counts towards saving their life
In the end, almost every mature adult consciously, or unconsciously, makes this risk/benefit assessment before driving, and very few let their decision to drive be governed absolutely by any criteria about the circumstances of themselves their vehicle, or their environment.Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Now drunks will have yet ANOTHER excuse why it wasn't "their fault" when they mow over a minivan full of 6th graders.
"The car wasn't supposed to let me drive! It let me drive so I figured I was okay! Not my fault!"
How about we take some fucking RESPONSIBILITY for our actions, eh?
If we are to switch to CO2 neutral biofuels, ethanol will very possibly be used as fuel in the future. I can't possibly see how that would cause a problem ...
So, now along comes a car that eliminates (or, at least, reduces) that, making the drunk driver look more like the other responsible drivers on the road.
Seems like a winner to me. Not.
Sure, a number of people who don't realize they're over the limit will do the right thing, but there's a (minority?) group who will use this to their own selfish advantage, exploiting the fact that it lets them drive with less chance of getting pulled over. The more these guys are on the road, the more likely the are to have an accident.
Here in Arizona, drunk driving is a pretty severe offense. I myself have never been arrested or convicted, but I know people who have. They're high-level misdemeanors at best, and felonies at worst.
Aside from the mark on the record, even pleading guilty and not hiring a lawyer will run you a few large. Bring lawyers into it, and you could see a bill for $5,000 or more, win or lose.
If you are convicted, you lose your license for 90 days, and have to spend not less than 24 hours and not more than 10 days in jail. Depending on some factors, a provisional 'work only' license may be issued.
DUI is a serious offense, don't get me wrong. It can cause all kinds of problems for the driver and other motorists and pedestrians. But I'm not sure why we don't spend as many resources preventing it as we do punishing it.
Also, if DUI is so dangerous (which I agree that it is), why not make red-light and stop sign running a similar offense? A friend of mine was killed last year while crossing at a crosswalk because some jerk-off ran a stop sign. He was cited for failure to stop at a stop sign.
Studies have repeatedly shown that talking on a cell phone while driving approximates the impairment level of a person past the legal limit for alcohol.
So why not start cracking down on ALL drivers who, through negligence or poor decisions, put others at risk? Why not either require all cars to have Interlock devices (sure, they can be beaten, but that justifies higher penalties for doing so), and/or make the law zero tolerance?
Unfortunately, I can only surmise that the reason things are the way they are regarding DUI here is because it's a slam-dunk, high-dollar case for the courts generating healthy city income. People would complain too much about having to put down their cell phones, and would cry about civil liberties with mandatory intoxalyzers in the car (despite that most states in the US make you sign a waiver giving up certain search and seizure laws upon getting a driver license).
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
Now, if only the could figure out how to get my car to stop beeping every time I take off my seatbelt at a toll booth or drive through window.
Anybody who is going to buy a car based on it's ability to detect a drunk driver is statistically the least likely to ever become a drunk driver anyway.
Next:
Nissan develops a new range of cars in different colour schemes specifically designed for the blind.
Yamaha produces a new home theatre audio system for the deaf
Nokia produces a new telephone for deaf-mutes.
Nabisco produces peanut snacks for people with peanut allergies.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Self-driving cars will never happen in the USA, at least not in the foreseeable future.
There, fixed it. You don't have the same sue-happy people in every country.
Or we could simply say that you, the driver, are liable when the system fails, since you should have been watching the traffic so you can take over from the automatic. Or do you get off the hook if your cruise control crashes into a suddenly breaking truck?
Self driving cars won't appear over night. They will be a growing process, where we get more and more steering aids and computer assistance. I'm fairly sure a system that can handle overland driving without heavy traffic is ready for mass production in a few years. The prototypes are there. LA rush hour might be a different thing, but the "boring" kind of steering will certainly be solvable by computers in a few years.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because driving drunk is a crime while driving tired is not?
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
One problem wouldn't the owner defeat the system just like I removed the speed governor from my car? Also that car is so damn ugly I just want to use it for target practice I mean isn't that the ugliest car you have ever seen I would never driver anything so ugly. Someone should beat the idiot who designed that eyesore with an idiot stick.
It would work if it's only a warning system and if the warning was very non invasive. If it was a lockout or annoying the system would quickly find itself bypassed or the car would quickly be traded in on a model with out it.
The first one is probably ok, except if there is some other substance that it detects as alcohol. (Perfumes, for example). The seat belt could probably strangulate someone, and the stubborn steering is as lethal as it sounds.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
If the purpose of self-driving cars is to relieve the need for licensure, that will NEVER happen. Until then, there are two very important words that should appear next to one's signature on one's driver license (as well as everywhere else one may affix a signature): WITHOUT PREJUDICE or W/O PRJ. Even the police power (the origin of traffic laws as well as admiralty law) is subject to reservation of rights as well as the Fourteenth Amendment.
The whole raison d'etre for public transportation is to keep calling driving 'a privilege' and not so much as to move about those who have no vehicles of their own.
Submission as evidence constitutes plaintiff and/or prosecutorial misconduct.
Apparently Nissan did NOT do its homework... Due to ignorance I must admit, but this system will likely cause Nissan some VERY bad publicity from a group of drivers who have a particular eye disorder known as Nystagmus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nystagmus If this system tracks eye movement, it will fail perfectly sober duly licensed drivers. Oh well, not much of a surprise coming from Nissan. There are good reasons the popularity of their products has been in the toilet since the late 80s...
Try this use case:
If the alcohol in the sanitizer doesn't evaporate quickly enough while steps 3 and 4 are happening, the detector makes a false positive.
It's about time thats a genius idea. No more this drunk drivers on the newspapers front page, no more weird drunk drivers stories like this one http://www.wwwpd.org/?p=58