what does it do?
Mason Greenwood
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what does it do?
I know a fellow here in Greece who was stopped one Saturday night and he was well over the limit. The police man gave him half an hour to sober up a bit as he was over the limit to an extent that he should have got arrested and the policeman couldn't be annoyed with it. After half an hour he was still over this limit so he was given an extra 15 minutes which he used to run up and down to sober up a bit. He was eventually under the 'arrestable' limit but still too drunk to drive so the police man told him to get a taxi home and pick the car up in the morning...
I believe the car doesn't start until someone sober blows into it...
No, the driving seat changes colour and cuts the ignition if you are over the limit.
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How to be backwards?
They don't need to teach that in America
The same arseholes that make that necessary are the same arseholes that make the ability to get in the car quickly and leave too valuable for me to want to freely give it up. In fact, the security systems installed for the country I now live in are similarly too cumbersome and take away some of the security a vehicle can provide in an emergency.
For the ignition to work, driver must blow into a device that measures alcohol. If over a prescribed limit, car does not start.
Eliminates completely the mindset of I'll have just a couple. Or driving the morning after going on a bender.
If alcohol were already illegal, there would be a tough case for making it legal. And I say that as someone who enjoys (now modest) consumption of it.
Cars are actually (part of) the issue here. There's lot of awful stuff that can occur when someone's under the influence. Few of them are as likely to occur as when someone gets behind the wheel.
I'll imagine you feel the same way about guns, though. So if the conversation is heading down that turnpike, I'll save us both some time and take the exit ramp now.
I do like the ban people suggestion though. Planet would definitely be better off.
Not picking culture war fights, just pointing out the blindingly obvious - people's individual freedom lies at the heart of every bad and every good decision. As a society we have to put some curbs on the worst behavior and ipso post facto limit people's individual freedom. Most of the crazy in our world can be explained by people pushing too far one way or the other.
Making hundreds of millions (billions?) of drivers pay for the additional cost of the kind of hardware you describe, and then be subject to them functioning properly and timely in order to transport oneself, because of a very small minority of people's bad decisions seems like one of those "pushing too far one way or the other" things. Like totally banning alcohol, although I agree with you that it likely would be a net positive for health, happiness, and relationships. Some bad acts you just can't pre-control without the cure being worse than the disease.
Making hundreds of millions (billions?) of drivers pay for the additional cost of the kind of hardware you describe, and then be subject to them functioning properly and timely in order to transport oneself, because of a very small minority of people's bad decisions seems like one of those "pushing too far one way or the other" things. Like totally banning alcohol, although I agree with you that it likely would be a net positive for health, happiness, and relationships. Some bad acts you just can't pre-control without the cure being worse than the disease.
Small price to pay for :
Drunk driving causes more than 10,000 deaths every year, about 1/3 of all traffic-related deaths. In a recent year, more than 230 children were killed in drunk-driving crashes, the NHTSA reports
But this is exactly the point. If you really cared, you'd be all for banning alcohol as 95,000 people die per year in the US from alcohol related deaths.
And then sugar. And then fatty foods. And then tobacco products. And then kale. etc
That isn't the point. There is realism and then there is what you've just said. At this moment in time the only realistic option is preventing drunk drivers driving, even if it proves a slight inconvenience for most other drivers. See seat belts, children banned from front seats etc. all small moves making driving safer.
So your realism = let me drink but control all the otherwise safe drivers so I can still drink. My realism = leave safe drivers alone and get to the heart of the issue.
228 million drivers in the US. Let's assume each person makes at least 25 drives per month. That's 5.7 billion drives/month and 68.4 billion drives/year. Now, 4 million admit to driving after they've drunk. Let's assume that happens at least twice per month. 8 million drunk drives/month, 96 million drunk drives/year. That is .001% of all drives.
Now, let's assume it's ten times as many drivers driving drunk twice per month. That's 80 million drunk drives/month, and 960 million/year. That is .01% of all drives.
I'm all for common sense laws to limit drunk driving, and significant but reasonable penalties. But suggesting that every single car should be fitted with a sobriety car lock of some kind based on something that occurs in .001-.01% of drives is a ludicrous overreach by government. And has issues of its own.
As I said, if you want to really make a difference ban alcohol. And kale. Always kale.
228 million drivers in the US. Let's assume each person makes at least 25 drives per month. That's 5.7 billion drives/month and 68.4 billion drives/year. Now, 4 million admit to driving after they've drunk. Let's assume that happens at least twice per month. 8 million drunk drives/month, 96 million drunk drives/year. That is .001% of all drives.
Now, let's assume it's ten times as many drivers driving drunk twice per month. That's 80 million drunk drives/month, and 960 million/year. That is .01% of all drives.
I'm all for common sense laws to limit drunk driving, and significant but reasonable penalties. But suggesting that every single car should be fitted with a sobriety car lock of some kind based on something that occurs in .001-.01% of drives is a ludicrous overreach by government. And has issues of its own.
As I said, if you want to really make a difference ban alcohol. And kale. Always kale.
Or ban driving.
I think the question gets at the heart of what are we prepared to pay to protect against terrible harms. We spend far more, with costs passed on to passengers, for safety systems related to aircraft. We spend FAR more on police and military to protect against perceived threats.
The costs here would be modest in comparison and may serve as an effective deterrent, in some ways, to the continued propagation of single occupant vehicles. Which is itself another major issue we need to reckon with in the coming years in regards to environmental and fiscal sustainability.
Ultimately I suspect you and I will draw the line on which protections are worth the costs but we incur far greater costs in other areas, sometimes with dubious gains.
So those roughly 3,500 deaths (of which 230 were children) are not worth asking every driver to spend 5 seconds blowing into a tube each time they enter their car. Gotcha.
Do we? The built-in breathalyzer would not eliminate the need for road policing, speed limits or or other car safety features, but will add enormous cost and inconvenience for 99% of drivers who don't drink plus a whole other layer of fighting against tampering with the device or finding clever workarounds as people would inevitably do. I think it's all about balance – technology can help improve safety to some extent, but it cannot eliminate all stupid or criminal behaviour. It's too convenient to think that some gadget can fix a flaw in human nature.
Enormous cost and inconvenience? Hardly. I doubt it would add much at all to car use when developed on such a humongous scale. Insignificant when considering the cost of owning and running a car. Inconvenience ? As I mentioned above : 5 secs ? Not more inconvenient than putting on your seat belt or adjusting mirrors (or just spending a few seconds less on a mobile phone which Google tells me is over 4 hours a day).
As for not having them because of possible workarounds, well that's just finding an excuse not to implement it. Like tachometer checks. Some people can indeed meddle with them but 99% of people can't and won't because of the potential for criminal prosecution.
To lesson 'inconvenience' (not that I'd agree with this) you could limit the necessity to take the test to certain times of day (not perfect but would greatly reduce the number of drunk drivers on the road) and not install it in the likes of emergency service vehicles or other qualifying vehicles whilst greatly increasing the fines/jail time for anyone caught drunk whilst in control of one of those vehicles or out of hours testing.
Is that how you cope with knowing your feelings led you to clown judgements on everything, and so you need to reassure yourself that feelings are still more valuable than mathematics? Cool.
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