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Sensor Measures In Fingertips If Driver Is Drunk
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The Economic Times reports on the first working prototypes of a new technology that would measure blood alcohol content in a driver's fingertips, using sophisticated touch-based sensors situated in steering wheels and door locks and engineers say that unlike court-ordered breath-analyzer ignition locks, which require a driver to blow into a tube and wait a few seconds for the result, their systems will analyze a driver's blood-alcohol content in less than one second. Anti-drunken driving crusaders believe that almost 9,000 road traffic deaths could be prevented every year if alcohol detection devices were used in all vehicles to prevent alcohol-impaired drivers from driving their vehicles. 'We believe this might turn the car into the cure for the elimination of drunk driving,' says Laura Dean-Mooney, president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. But not everyone is enamored of the device which could be available to automakers in eight to 10 years. 'For ordinary, law-abiding citizens, it's an invasion of their privacy,' says Christen Varley, president of the Greater Boston Tea Party."
My fingers get cold. I drive with gloves, at least till the car warms up.
I imagine drunk drivers would do the same.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Problem solved. The marijuana/cocaine/etc ban makes it illegal to imbibe these substances. So let's just do the same with alcohol, and all our problems will disappear. No more drunks == no more drunk driving.
Note:
I'm being sarcastic.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
If cars are still able to be crashed in 10 years, I think something has gone wrong. Isn't the real solution to drunk driving to get rid of all people controlled driving? That could be the great selling point of more automated cars: "Feel free to drive home drunk."
Problem solved. The marijuana/cocaine/etc ban makes it illegal to imbibe these substances. So let's just do the same with alcohol, and all our problems will disappear. No more drunks == no more drunk driving.
Note:
I'm being sarcastic.
I certainly hope so. People should be able to put anything they want into their bodies, upto and including cyanide. Else they are not truly free.
Deal with the abuse of the drugs (DUI) not the banning of them, or alcohol.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
For sure, deaths as a result drunk driving are both preventable and tragic.
But folks, let's have some perspective with the hysteria: 9000 death a year are in fact one of the smaller numbers in the world of preventable deaths.
The hysteria far outweighs the threat, much like TSA and air travel.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Call me stupid but how is this an invasion of privacy, it's not like information regarding your drunkenness is being passed over to the authorities.
Mark Hinkle, chairman of the Libertarian National Committee, fears the devices could evolve like seat belts — introduced as voluntary safety features that become lawfully enforced.
Oh yes those evil seat belts made mandatory because they save peoples lives, damn evil big government regulating car safety . Has it come to the point where there has to be a knee-jerk reaction to everything just for the sake of it?
This is taking the entirely wrong approach here. The thing I never quite understood about ignition interlocks is why repeat DUI offenders are even allowed to drive a car at all. If after $N_MAX_OFFENSES you still can't control yourself, I don't trust you with a car, period. What this idea says is that because we've decided in giving an infinite number of second chances to the small fraction of the population that can't realistically be expected to act responsibly on their own, we're now going to impose an expensive mandatory new toy on everyone else, out of their pockets, and if the thing screws up and gives a false alarm, too bad.
If the court can order you to pay for an ignition interlock after a DUI, then it can sure as hell order you to sell your car, period.
If the data is collected then someone will find a way to abuse it.
Think about your insurance company or employer. If they could go back and pull your auto's history of your intoxication logs. They would find a way to use this to their advantage.
The collection and retention is data is generally to the disadvantage of the little guy...
I think you accidentally a verb.
Karnal
In Colorado, the data captured by the interlock device is periodically downloaded by the installer and sent to the Department of Revenue. If the driver has failed the test 3 or more times in a 12 month period their license is again suspended regardless of the cause of the failure.
False positives are a common occurrence and result in more than just the inconvenience of not being able to start the car.
The device itself is a point of failure that can render your car useless until you have it towed to a shop for repairs.
You might believe that repeat offenders deserve the hassle of the interlock device but requiring all vehicles to have some sort of alcohol monitoring system is costly, ineffective, dumb and wrong.
Well, according to this, about 32% of all car accident-related deaths are due to drunk driving. That means, that 68% are due to non-drunk driving! People, if you want to lower the number of people killed in traffic accidents, start drinking, because the sober people are more dangerous.
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
Stuff happens, people die. One of my best friends in high school was killed when his car was hit by a drunk. To me, I'd rather the drunk lost his license rather than my car fitted with an interlock. I don't even drink, why should I have to pay for someone else's irresponsibility?
Measures like this are a waste of everyone's resources that distract from more serious problems - broken education, declining scientific investment, an uncompetitive economy, etc.
Endangering one's self is freedom. Endangering other's life abuses other's freedom.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
I flat-out mistrust MADD, which is always on the side of more police power. They are to the traffic police what child pornography is to Internet regulation.
That doesn't make any sense.
First of all, if the driver has this installed because they have been convicted of driving drunk . . . WHY ARE THEY BEING ALLOWED TO DRIVE AT ALL?
Second of all, if the device is preventing the person from driving, who cares if they fail the "test" a thousand times in a year?
This kind of stuff reminds me of the bullshit in Oregon. In Oregon, we have the OLCC (Oregon Liquor Control Commission). In Oregon, a shop keeper is not allowed to directly purchase alcohol. The state purchases all of the alcohol and then marks up the price and sells it to retailers who then mark it up and sell it to customers. Until just a few years ago, one of the OLCC's laws required that customers provide a DRIVER'S LICENSE as identification at a bar. Not a state ID card. It had to be a LICENSE. In other words, if you had absolutely no way you could be driving yourself home, then you weren't allowed to drink. I think this was changed only about five years ago.
Of course, the OLCC is a whole other story, frankly. In Oergon, all liquor is owned by the state. The entire inventory in your store is owned by the state and you are working on commission, essentially. And only liquor stores can sell liquor (ie, nothing stronger than beer in your grocery store). There are about 200+ of these in the state. They also don't allow places to serve more than one drink at a time. Or drink from a pitcher (even if you ordered a pitcher).
Required liability insurance should not work as punishment. I can understand why insurance companies may want to increase the premium, but outright denying coverage should not be allowed.
This is similar to the issue of sex offender registration. If a guy has paid from his crimes (fine, driving ban, jail, whatever), then he should not have to suffer any more.
Don't let them bullshit you for one second that the value of lives is at all relevant to them, here. The motivating factor is the value of the government contracts that will be handed out should this idea succeed. The same kind of contracts that benefit certain industries if we fall for the idea that we should stick everyone under house arrest and fit them with an electronic bracelet for even the slightest crime (and, of course, people will think that's a tremendous idea if the alternative is jail time).
The result is an enormous revenue stream. Every single person in this country convicted of some sort of a violation (in this case, we'll just stick to alcohol related) fitted with an expensive device for an additional expensive installation fee. Then their car, fitted with an expensive device and another expensive installation fee. Then expensive monthly subscriptions (paid out of the individual's pocket) for monitoring and maintenance. If you don't have the money or you find it an abhorrent solution, then you can always opt not to participate and not pay all of that money. Of course, then we're going to lock you up in prison for a year. So it's not like we're not giving you freedom of choice!
If they REALLY gave a fuck about preventing lives, the solution wouldn't involve ridiculously complex and expensive monitoring and fittings and equipment farmed out to private industry. The solution would be that if you are convicted of driving drunk, your license would be revoked for the rest of your life and if you still put society in danger by driving without a license, then we stick you in prison.
I made this point in response to someone else, but: Alcohol impairs response time (and judgment, to some extent, but response time most of all). We had been nearly parked in during a Christmas party: My (entirely sober) wife was unwilling to attempt extraction, but understanding alcohol impairment, was happy to let me pull our car out of its parking place. I did so, then turned the driver's seat over to her. With the article's alcohol detection system in place, I would not have been able to drive at all, not even in a private drive (where we'd been parked); it couldn't know "public roads" (your term) from the private drive, where I endangered no one.
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!