Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by PragmaticPulp 1693 days ago
The wording in the actual bill looks vague enough that I hope this is more for show than for actual implementation.

It specifically requires non-contact sensors that can “accurately” detect blood alcohol level of the driver. It may be possible to detect trace exhaled alcohol in the air, but you’re never going to get accurate blood alcohol measurements from proximity alone.

In the unlikely event that such a system made it to market, it would quickly become common knowledge among alcoholics that it could be defeated by rolling down your window to get more airflow through the cabin. More airflow means trace alcohol in the air is diluted and blown away. Reading goes to zero.

The bill also requires that the technology limit the operation of a vehicle after impairment is detected. There’s no way a system that suddenly causes a vehicle to slow down to pedestrian speeds could be considered safe for use on freeways. Can you imagine someone’s car slowing to a crawl on the freeway and forcing them to move at low speeds on the shoulder because their distraction detection system had a false positive? Even a false positive rate of 0.001% would mean a lot of us would pass a car experiencing a false positive on our commute every week. Awful.
1 comments
wartijn_ 1693 days ago
About your last paragraph: the goal of these measurements would of course be to prefect you from driving at all when alcohol is detected. Suggesting that the idea is that people are slowed down on a freeway because of this seems absurd.
link
Brian_K_White 1693 days ago
failing to project that this would happen all day every day everywhere, is absurd
link
wartijn_ 1693 days ago
No it's not. Car manufacturers and regulators have been trying to make cars safer for decades and won't just (require to) add some feature that is as unsafe as your proposed "solution" And the solution here is simple: do the check when the car is starting and don't drive when alcohol is detected. That's how current alcohol locks work. Nobody is suggesting to test when the car is already driving and nobody is suggesting to slow cars down.
link