Built-in breathalyzer?

Yeah, more regulation and mandated safety stuff... but I'm all for this.

http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/06/nhtsa-shows-off-prototype-car-that-wont-start-if-the-driver-is-drunk/

Philosophically I don't have a problem with a car that wouldn't start if you're too drunk to drive.

Practically, it would have to be as quick as starting with a key and about as simple, and highly reliable.

Then you have to ask yourself if enforcing the extremely conservative legal limit, meant to eliminate the possibility of false negative results for absolutely everyone, is a good idea.

And then there's the problem of the DRM-like nature of the technology - alcoholics would find ways to bypass the mechanism, leading to an obfuscation arms race that ends up hurting everyone except those it's intended to stop.

A system like this already exists for those convicted of a DUI. You have to blow to start the car, and every now and again, the beeper sounds, and you have to blow again, or the car will shut down. (A friend ran into trouble and had this device in his car)

In practice, it seems like a good idea----especially for those who have been convicted of DUI.

Um, no. Unless the car shuts off if you try to text, eat a sandwich, take Vicodin, ... AND the people who do not imbibe can get a waiver so they don't need to pay for something that isn't necessary. Oh, and if it can be turned off for use on private property where it's not illegal to drink a six pack and then move the car from the garage to the trailer and pull the other car in to work on it.

How about making it voluntary! How about it's completely innocuous. You can be hammered drunk, still start and drive but if you don't blow in the tube it turns a blinking blue light on the roof calling attention to your decision not to verify your sobriety? You might be mistaken for a volunteer fireman but that's ok, most of them are driving drunk too!

SAAB had this some time ago: Saab ‘Alcokey’ – Breathalyser

as somebody who does not drink.. I would hate to have to deal with it.. but.. and here is the but, at the times I am either coming or going to work (either very early in the morning or late at night)I see a -lot- of drunks on the road.. so I can see a need for it

In reply to GameboyRMH:

Kinda hard to set a "one size fits all" thing to the equation. Most of our states have different legal limits overall, and some licenses have even lower limits than the masses. Mine is .04 bac to be legal, while our state's normal limit is .08.......stupid 26k lb truck license.

I had a coworker that had a similar setup because she had 3 DUI's, her way around it was to have the neighborhood kid use the breathalyser so she could start the car. I think a stupid test would be better...

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Unless the car shuts off if you try to text,

I would be 100% behind this, but I don't think anyone has figured out how to do it yet.

I can deal with the "inconvenience" of not being able to shuffle cars around in my driveway while hammered if it means there are thousands less drunks on the road.

trigun7469 wrote: I had a coworker that had a similar setup because she had 3 DUI's, her way around it was to have the neighborhood kid use the breathalyser so she could start the car. I think a stupid test would be better...

They require you to re-test randomly as you are driving, so even having someone else start it, you wouldn't get very far.

Point of diminishing returns. Society is already doing a great deal and a great job of reducing drunks on the roads. Do I honestly expect them to get all of them? No, cause much the same as modifying our cars to get the last few miles of top speed, the cost to get the last few percentage points in any cause is exponentially more expensive. In this case, to society in general. Since 90% of the population will have to put up with the collateral impact of such technology, (cost, maintenance, annoyance and false readings) we will lose respect for the original goal.

How long before MADD decided this has to be linked to a com port and the police notified that you were attempting to commit a crime? Lord knows it would be recorded in the cars computer memory. I can see where the price of cars built before such a fascist move would go way up.

Drunks are just too easy of a target for the people who are looking for a cause to get rich on. Take MADD. A mostly irrelevant organization now that much of what they stated as their mission was accomplished. So, they had to lower the bar to remain relevant and maintain their income stream. NOT a fan of such things. Lets move on to another cause with richer soil to till...

Before I endorsed any further controls on drinking and driving, I want to see full radio signal jamming from within the car so that all these idiots get off the phone. And I do include hands free in that ban; a distraction is a distraction and as such zero tolerance needs to be enforced. Right? This is low hanging fruit, but since nobody has figured how to monetize it, it has not been pursued.

Then lets move on to the art of eating and driving. And getting dressed on the way to work and driving. And screaming at your kids in the backseat and driving.

Next we need to move on to enforcing mental distraction. No driving if your stockbroker told you you lost it all, your doctor told you you have cancer, your wife took a lover or your daughter got knocked up. And god help us if you are daydreaming about something shapely you saw on the beach.

You know what...lets just get the damn autonomous car on the road and say berkeley it, it looks like driving is way too much for a human to do anyways.

In reply to ProDarwin: her commute was less then a mile, but she did fail it a couple of times and blamed on the ingredients of Fat free Newtons, she was a trip.

In reply to NOHOME:

The MADD people are too busy getting busted for DUI to be able to push for this.....

Soon, the precogs will be able to tell the police before you drink drive so that can arrest you ahead of time.

yamaha wrote: In reply to NOHOME: The MADD people are too busy getting busted for DUI to be able to push for this.....

Would not surprise me one bit. The ones that shout the loudest from the pulpit tend to be the worst hypocrites. Key Mr Rush Limbaugh and friends.

So, yeah, lets put a a hypocrite detector on cars while we are at it.

trigun7469 wrote: In reply to ProDarwin: her commute was less then a mile, but she did fail it a couple of times and blamed on the ingredients of Fat free Newtons, she was a trip.

A guy that worked for me had one in his car. He was late to work one day and said that his mouthwash made him fail. I didn't believe him. He brought it with him to prove the point. I gargled with the mouthwash and failed the test. It took 20 minutes before I could pass it again. They are very sensitive. I told him to switch mouthwashes.

EDIT; Also with my asthma and general lack of breathing ability, I really struggled to get enough air into it to work. I seriously almost passed out. I have no problem with them being installed after a DUI, I do not want them to be standard equipment in all cars.

Isn't there a drowsy sensor in certain MB models? Something that counts the duration and frequency of your blinks?

It seems passive sensors watching this and some other driver cues would be a more useful way to direct these resources and would be able to catch other things besides alchoholic intoxication.

It would be funny if they were mandated and autonomous cars had to have them. It would destroy the very market it serves!

I read a statistic that said one in four traffic deaths are caused by drunk drivers. Seems to me we're targeting the wrong demographic here. Why not target the 75% that are sober and still kill someone? Seems to me theres more gains to be had.

GameboyRMH wrote: And then there's the problem of the DRM-like nature of the technology - alcoholics would find ways to bypass the mechanism, leading to an obfuscation arms race that ends up hurting everyone except those it's intended to stop.

quickly files a patent for "sober breath in a can"

Butseriously, drunk driving, distracted driving, drowsy driving, just plain bad driving... the solution for all of these and more is autonomous cars for the masses.

Joe Gearin wrote: A system like this already exists for those convicted of a DUI. You have to blow to start the car, and every now and again, the beeper sounds, and you have to blow again, or the car will shut down.

They don't shut down. I've worked on cars equipped with these, and they don't shut the car off, even after an hour, which is as long as I've ever ran one over the years. They just keep screaming at you to hum into the device. (You don't just blow, you have to hum into it like a kazoo)

I would imagine the operating theory is that it is dangerous to shut off a car at random for ANY reason. However if the driver gets pulled over for any other reason and an installed breathalyzer is screaming, that in itself is probable cause for a sobriety check.

Mainly, I think it's a cash grab. They're something like $1000 to have installed, $1000 to have removed, and $90/month lease on the device. They're easily defeatable (have someone else blow into it then drive wherever), as evidenced by the way the vehicles I've had to work with would have empty beer cans strewn about. The last two I had to deal with the customer declined to demonstrate how it worked, just explained verbally - after driving to the shop. Neat idea in theory but in practice it is simply a money filtration device that changes nothing.

I know a guy who had one installed in college. It never once stopped him from drinking and driving.

I think theres a solution to serve everyone- autonomous cars that, when operated autonomously, dispense drinks for all the passengers out of a built in minibar. No drunk drivers crashing into people, drunks dont have to stop being drunk, nobody has to blow into a hose, and car and booze companies can team up and profit from partnerships. This would of course require an additional price rise to cover all the booze making it not exactly free, but as you said those hoses arent free either. Different contracts for different drinks of choice, of course.

Nick_Comstock wrote:

trigun7469 wrote: In reply to ProDarwin: her commute was less then a mile, but she did fail it a couple of times and blamed on the ingredients of Fat free Newtons, she was a trip.

A guy that worked for me had one in his car. He was late to work one day and said that his mouthwash made him fail. I didn't believe him. He brought it with him to prove the point. I gargled with the mouthwash and failed the test. It took 20 minutes before I could pass it again. They are very sensitive. I told him to switch mouthwashes. EDIT; Also with my asthma and general lack of breathing ability, I really struggled to get enough air into it to work. I seriously almost passed out. I have no problem with them being installed after a DUI, I do not want them to be standard equipment in all cars.

horse race jockeys aren't allowed to ride if they've been drinking … the mouthwash thing was picked up on (in their case yrs and yrs ago)

Nick_Comstock wrote:

trigun7469 wrote: In reply to ProDarwin: her commute was less then a mile, but she did fail it a couple of times and blamed on the ingredients of Fat free Newtons, she was a trip.

A guy that worked for me had one in his car. He was late to work one day and said that his mouthwash made him fail. I didn't believe him. He brought it with him to prove the point. I gargled with the mouthwash and failed the test. It took 20 minutes before I could pass it again. They are very sensitive. I told him to switch mouthwashes. EDIT; Also with my asthma and general lack of breathing ability, I really struggled to get enough air into it to work. I seriously almost passed out. I have no problem with them being installed after a DUI, I do not want them to be standard equipment in all cars.

and what would prevent someone from adapting a compressed air bottle / hose to clamp on the input and using that air to bypass the control ?

In reply to wbjones:

As has been said, you have to hum. It's not just blow as hard as you can.

I saw with my own eyes and my own breath. Rinsing with an alcohol based mouthwash caused me to not be able to start his car for 20 min. I don't know what you're talking about with jockeys