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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?
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.
...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 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."
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.
for drivers yakking away on their cell phone instead of watching the road.
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.
Or worse yet, it record the alcohol in the cars computer and you get into an accident that they come back later and cite you with a DUI over and consider it your fault when someone else ran a red light.
Why would you want to turn of stability control? The last two cars I have owned have all had ESP programs (granted, the ESP is defeatable if I wanted to take the car to the track), and they have never been intrusive. There are a number of studies that show vehicles, particularly SUVs, have a much lower chance of rolling in a collision if they have stability control.
About 10 years ago, I was in a 100+ MPH head on collision with a drunk driver who was being pursued by the local police. I was driving a Pontiac Fiero, which has about the same number of safety features that your future kit car is likely to have, and the impact basically folded the entire car in on itself. Fortunately the only place inside the cabin that wasn't totally compressed was the driver's footwell and seat, but I still had to be cut out of the car, and had the engine been in the front instead of the rear, I wouldn't be here to write this. Since then, safety features in the cars that I buy is always a major priority; sure they add weight, but my current car has 1 HP per 9 LBS of weight and a full array of air-bags, crumple zones, ESP, all wheel drive, ABS, you name it, and it's not a slouch.
I find it amusing that people don't want these features because it adds weight, and think they are so proficient a driver that that shaving those potentially life-saving pounds will actually result in a perceptable difference to the car's performance. Maybe there are people out their for whom weight savings are critical, but these are the guys buying BMW M3 CSLs and ripping out the back seats in order to get optimal track performance, not becuase it will get them to work 2 seconds faster. Your car's performance will never be a significant factor in the time that it takes to get travel from A-B on most American roads, but your car's safety features may one day save your life.
A One that isn't cold, is scarcely a One at all.
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.