A handful of years back the NHTSA announced that all new cars would have to have a vehicle to vehicle 5.7-5.9 GHz system for announcing vehicle position, velocity, and cryptographically signed ID. Luckily the dates just came and went and the manufacturers didn't do it. The NHTSA folded and eventually the FCC gave that ~hundreds MHz of 5 GHz band back to wifi.
Hopefully that's what will happen here. The NTSB only recommends things to the NHTSA. So this proposal hasn't even gotten as far as the above example.
> you for drunk driving or excessive speed driving or both?
I’m against a system that refuses to let me drive because it thinks I’m drunk. Or a system that would prevent me from breaking the speed limit, at my discretion, e.g. in an emergency.
> against disabling cars, but all for automatically notifying 911
Depending on the system's accuracy, this could be a fair compromise. Alternatively: a black box record in case something goes wrong. Less preventative. But deterring and reasonable.
Are you saying that anyone should be allowed to drive whatever speed they like, based on their "discretion"? If so, is that different from getting rid of speed limits?
Most people aren't capable of driving as fast as a trained emergency responder, much less driving like a psycho in a panic because they're dealing with a medical emergency and are completely emotionally unprepared for it.
I've been involved in an situation that resulted in a fatality and trying to rescue the victim and for an untrained responder your ability to think and process gets chopped down to around 25% of what it is normally. That is probably worse if the victim is someone you know. Now you want to argue that those people should be driving 100 mph through the streets blowing through red lights and whatever at their own discretion like that solves problems.
People need to call 911 and get the ambulance, which can stabilize the patient, to come to them. They can run code red and are trained in how to run red lights and get around traffic safely. They do it for a living and they're emotionally detached from the emergency.
Not to mention that the tires on the average vehicle shouldn't be driven that fast and they're probably nearly bald due to lack of maintenance.
> Not really sure what you're arguing for here. Are you for drunk driving or excessive speed driving or both?
Your strawman is naked. You should dress him in some plausible deniability.
There's nothing in the comment you are replying to to suggest in the slightest way that he is in favor of those things. Just because he's against the flavor of Skynet(TM) you want doesn't mean he's in favor of whatever random "bad thing" you want to paint him as in favor of.
Driving on the 401 in Toronto, cars are usually going 130 km/he in a 100 km/hr zone. People get to their destinations safely. The unnecessary complexity and price of a speed limiter is not worth it.
>Assuming a final rule is issued in 2019, this would mean that the phase-in period would begin in 2021, and all vehicles subject to that final rule would be required to comply in 2023.
They're also recommending speed limiters that essentially force you to follow the limits.
I wonder if we'd see speed limits increase if everyone followed them as-posted? Because right now there seems to be this assumption from both sides that everyone is speeding, so they post 70 because they want 80, or 25 because they want 30, etc.
While DUI is a legitimate problem, it isn't clear to me though what exactly the NTSB is proposing here? They have those "breathe into" systems (interlocks), but they have hygiene and maintenance limitations. Unclear how driver monitoring systems can determine if someone is DUI (in particular when you look at edge cases, like disabled drivers that move atypically while still be authorized to drive).
PS - I suspect, but cannot show data, that existing upcoming safety technology may decrease DUI caused fatalities in particular "driverless" automations like lane centering, automatic lane-changes, and autonomous navigation. While I don't consider this technology mature, it may still be safer than an inebriated driver.
On first blush I thought the same thing - what, you're going to have to blow into some tube to start your car? I can understand this for people who have been convicted of drunk driving, but for everyone? But looking around it appears they have some mechanism by which they can determine with some degree of accuracy via touch, and it's integrated into the ignition button on a car:
They also appear to have other approaches as well, but this one seems like it would be almost transparent to the operation of the car.
Honestly I have zero objection to something that worked in this fashion - I suspect it would save a ton of lives. I think the knee jerk reaction that it's somehow a big brother kind of thing is a bit disingenuous, like saying "The government shouldn't interfere with my ability to drive drunk and potentially hurt people". I think this is much more akin to when wearing seat belts became the law - people moaned and complained but at the end of the day it's better for both themselves and others in the vehicle.
The speeding thing is completely unrelated and really shouldn't be mixed into this - how about solving one problem at a time well, instead of lumping a bunch together and solving none. I've had friends badly injured by drunk drivers, and in all the cases the drunk driver wasn't exceeding the posted speed limit. In one they just smashed into a parked car and hit them on the sidewalk, in one they swerved into oncoming traffic and collided head on, and the last drove into a store at full speed. Thankfully these were three different people I know, and not one incredibly unlucky person. ;)
> PS - I suspect, but cannot show data, that existing upcoming safety technology may decrease DUI caused fatalities in particular "driverless" automations like lane centering, automatic lane-changes, and autonomous navigation. While I don't consider this technology mature, it may still be safer than an inebriated driver.
While current self-driving technology is obviously unsafe when given total control, I think it could be turned into an extraordinarily effective safety system: program it to only take accident avoidance measures and low-level corrections like lane centering, and crank up the thresholds so it only gets invoked in clearly dangerous scenarios.
> I wonder if we'd see speed limits increase if everyone followed them as-posted?
Yeah, "speed limits" are primarily a political game, not anything based in reality. Roads designed for 55 get labeled 45 (in 1990) then 40 (2000) then 35 (2010) and then "road dieted" to 25 (2020). Everyone's "speeding" on paper, but not in reality -- they're going the speed they're were always supposed to go. But politically, people just decided slower=nicer for their particular stretch of street (they already live there, so 'walkability' is just fine for them, strip out all the lanes, throw garbage into the street, whatever) without really caring about how badly it would impact public transportation for everyone in general. It's a textbook "tragedy of the commons" problem.
If you enforce this by vehicle, everyone's going to flip out (because the fake-posted-speed-limit is way below what any sensible person is actually safely driving) and you'll see a significant number of people instantly jailbreak their cars to fix it.
> Yeah, "speed limits" are primarily a political game, not anything based in reality.
This is utter absurd, it's definitely based in the reality of 1/2 m*v^2. Decreasing the speed decreases the kinetic energy of impacts, decreasing injuries and deaths. That's the reality.
The fact that American roads were designed as the beastly stroads and 6-lanes inner city avenues that are present all around doesn't mean their speed limits should follow that design, the speed limit should follow what utilisation occurs around the road.
You might be right that in some places speed limits can be a political stunt of sorts. Basic physics and the examples of multiple Western countries which achieved a less deadly traffic by implementing stricter speed limits (among other measures) should show you part of the reality you feel is lacking.
Look at Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and so on. USA's road fatalities per billion km-vehicle are on average double, you can do better and kill less people, in total amount of road fatalities the USA is only behind Brazil.
No road in a city centre should allow for faster than 40 km/h traffic around people. A road (non-motorway) with major separation between automobiles and people in a city shouldn't exceed 60 km/h. Traffic even flows better with larger windows for smart traffic control, lower the speed, lower the average travel time.
I lived and drove up and down Europe, though not Norway. Roads there are designed to be less injurious, and speeding fines can be very high. There is also little tolerance for any drinking and driving.
USA infatuation with left turns across roads posted at 45 mph or higher lead to deadly T-bone collisions. European roads often have roundabouts which naturally slow traffic and a collision would be a glancing side kiss. USA foot gun left turns kill people by design.
Agree with this and the left turn dangers. I’ve heard EU countries among others are also much more strict than the US in terms of DUI punishments - license revoked for life.
yes and no. I do suspect that limits are often adjusted for reasons that have more to do with revenue than safety. but at the same time, the designed speed of a road isn't always appropriate for the surroundings. 55 could be an reasonable limit for a country road at the time of construction, but way too high when a bunch of shops and homes are built around it later on. ideally the road itself would be modified to reflect that, but there isn't always money for these types of projects.
There are a lot of roads around Austin that are FM (some number). The “FM” means Farm-to-Market, and they literally were built from little farming towns through miles of fields into larger towns.
Some of those little farming towns are now rapidly frowning suburbs, teeming with housing tracts, and those fields are now shopping center upon shopping center.
I suspect the edge cases will do this in. False positives are potentially discriminatory and are dangerous if they prevent someone from driving in an emergency.
I also suspect many people favor letting some legally over the limit people drive, at least short distances, in certain emergency situations, like transporting relatives who can’t walk away from a fire. Exactly what those situations are seems like a subject of contention.
There’s also the related interesting case of moving vehicles on private property. For instance, a couple has a few cocktails at home, their car is towards the bottom of a sloped driveway under a tree, and there’s an unexpected flash flood or high wind warning. Should the car prevent them from driving it forward a few feet to safety?
Well, just this past Sunday I literally had a random drunk driver pull onto my private property and proceed to wreck their vehicle in my front yard. While the interlock would have kept them from starting the vehicle originally, the stupidity from drunkenness is still present regardless of location or speed. I strongly disagree with interlocks (someone could have just cleaned their hands with alcohol sanitizer, or someone spilled a beer on their hand or on the sensor itself), but I would be more amenable to something that could be overridden immediately but with some warning notification lights on the vehicle with laws stating you will be pulled over for inspection and you(not insurance) will be responsible for any damages or accidents you caused if proven drunk driving after disabling the lock.
> I would be more amenable to something that could be overridden immediately but with some warning notification lights on the vehicle
I think that is a pretty good solution. In any emergency/ edge case / false positive scenario, you are still able operate your car. But a "pull me over" light goes on so that cops will know to double check in "regular" scenarios.
It would make sense to make the system possible to disable and then make speeding a much much more serious crime where unless you can prove it was an emergency or other edge case, you lose your license on first offense.
> They're also recommending speed limiters that essentially force you to follow the limits.
That's not the entire truth. They want speed limiters that _can be disabled_, in the same way as the Auto Off emissions control feature. And, right now, the discussion is leaning towards first employing mandatory speeding chimes - and doing away with speed limiting functionality altogether.
Normal procedures have them measure the n-th percentile actual speed and then derate it. So if procedures aren't changed limiters would lower speed limits.
Yes, typically State DOT has published rules for speed studies and they seem to usually follow those results. I have seen speed limits on several road sections increase after speed studies.
> I wonder if we'd see speed limits increase if everyone followed them as-posted? Because right now there seems to be this assumption from both sides that everyone is speeding, so they post 70 because they want 80, or 25 because they want 30, etc.
If there were speed limiters, it would probably be reasonable to increase highway speeds in places where they are excessively low, but to also enforce the current speed limits on residential streets as hard limits or even lower them.
This would massively increase safety while eliminating any concern about speeding tickets at normal highway speeds that people actually drive at.
So-called "self-driving" systems, or the more-accurately-named lane-keeping and distance-keeping systems, may or may not be safer than human drivers driving equivalent cars, but they are much safer than alcohol-impaired drivers.
The idea of having to blow into a tube every time I start my car seems outrageous, of course, but so many deaths every year in the US are due to alcohol-impaired driving that I'd almost be willing to support it.
Of course, given that they're only calling for new cars to be so equipped, we'd be looking at a very long period of time in which people prone to driving under the influence would refuse to buy newer cars, justifying it by saying that the systems don't understand how their alcohol tolerance works.
To be clear: this article is about passive detection systems that use e.g. infrared and touch sensors; it's not the blow-in-a-tube kind of system a judge might order to be installed in the car of a habitual DUI driver.
I missed that, thanks for the call-out. Now I'm curious about how well these systems work, whether they are able to tell the difference between someone inebriated and someone sick, etc. Making a note for a future rabbit hole.
> The passage defining what Congress actually wants describes a system that can "passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired; and... prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected." This is only half of the proposed system, though. The other half specifically references blood alcohol content, saying the technology must "passively and accurately detect whether the blood alcohol concentration of a driver of a motor vehicle is equal to or greater than the blood alcohol concentration described in section 163(a) of title 23, United States Code; and... prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if a blood alcohol concentration above the legal limit is detected."
The first half is impossible in a car that has assistance features. You can't use machine learning to figure out if a driver using lane-assistance and radar cruise control on a highway is drunk because they're hardly driving at all. There are no inputs to analyse.
The second half is literally impossible. You cannot passively detect a driver's blood alcohol. You can actively detect it by having interlocks in the car but they have to be calibrated regularly and it's not passive at all.
For the first half, it's possible by requiring manual drive for a few minutes before auto cruise. It's enough to handle most cases unless driver drink alcohol in the car.
I think the passive system will likely using steering wheel sensors and driving-facing cameras to detect if a person is paying attention similar to Teslas requirement for FSD
Once again, the actions of a few are hurting everyone else. Why not target the few?
There's a solid connection between DUI enforcement and reduction in deaths. We've all heard of crashes involving someone with multiple DUI arrests. These offenders need identifying, help, supervision, and maybe removing their driving privileges.
An obvious middle ground is that anyone convicted of DUI must [for some long period of time] have an alcohol detection system installed in any car they wish to drive.
Perhaps then mandate that cars be compatible with some standard for such systems to try to bring the cost of them down - the actual alcohol sensor is mere cents, but integrating it into todays cars aftermarket is often very costly.
The high cost, installation/electrical issues (while in use and after it is uninstalled.), annd inconvenience is part of the intended punishment.
I’ve seen people do interesting things to avoid getting interlocks installed. In that state if you owned a business an interlock must be installed in all company vehicles. People will sign over vehicles to family members. Some buy a beater car to have the interlock installed on and only start the car a couple times a month to log the minimum amount of starts required for compliance which is checked monthly for an additional fee.
Not really. In most cases the actual jail time is suspended. Jail costs the city/town. Getting you back in the road insures more tax revenue and your fines will most likely get paid which is additional revenue to the city.
As you said, the sentence is suspended - because the person agrees to the option of staying out of jail with conditions which the person agrees to comply with. If the person doesn't want that option then they do the jail time.
I assume the logic is that you need to demonstrate you have driven X thousand times, never with alcohol on your breath, before you can say your DUI problem has been solved.
I guess you are free to not drive in a month, but then the tester will need to stay attached to your car longer till you have demonstrated you are rehabilitated.
Well if you just let the car sit there all month then there is no reason you need to take it into the shop to be “calibrated” which costs 45-55$ per month.
Oh and by the way the interlock calibration installation / removal / calibration business is privately owned and only open Monday through Friday 9-11am 2-4pm by appointment only.
Pretty much every post-conviction thing court mandates people pay for is a blatant cash grab from people nobody will stand up for. Interlocks are no different.
People like to claim to courts that they NEED a car and MUST have a car. This way they can keep some sort of restricted driving license that lets them drive to/from work, school or grocery stores.
Actually not driving would show your claims (under penalty of perjury) to be lies. Courts do not like that at all.
They should charge people with attempted homicide with a deadly weapon while under the influence.
Like the side object detection and backup cameras, mandatory electronics are great for component manufacturers. For consumers it increases initial costs and reduces resale value after some years due to difficulty of affordably fixing old electronics. Much of this is financial punishment on the poor and working class.
Alternatively, instead of using repression mechanisms, the government could take care in setting up proper public transport so that people don't feel the need to drive drunk.
Here in Germany, in almost all urban and urban-surrounding places you're not stuck to expensive taxis to get home after a bar night, you simply hop into a bus. In rural areas, the situation looks different, and correspondingly the DUI rates are higher there.
Your link doesn't seem to establish a connection between DUI enforcement and reduction in deaths FYI (unless I somehow missed it...). Driving deaths from DUI may have decreased while states were enforcing DUI laws, but the causality isn't all that clear. Meanwhile, distracted driving has exploded since the arrival of the smartphone and made it even harder to understand the dynamics behind road safety.
That said, I once read that the most important enforcement factors, with regard to actually reducing DUIs, were 1) increasing the likelihood of being caught and 2) minimizing the time between being caught and experiencing consequences. Notably, severity of punishment wasn't a significant factor. I know that states will differ in enforcement approaches, but the US states I've lived in haven't seemed at all interested in adopting a data-driven perspective - what I've seen has been a very low likelihood of DUI detection coupled with prosecution that can take a year or more for a routine DUI (let's not forget needlessly harsh punishments that are more likely to destroy one's family or finances than decrease the likelihood of future DUI...).
The contentious nature of this topic seems to make it hard to find rational discussions online. I've found plenty of emotional anecdotes, but few evidence-based suggestions mentioned (aside from the obvious but unrealistic suggestion to make cars unnecessary...). I'm no expert, but the "traditional American" perspective - 'Drunk drivers are horrible people who will go to hell when they die. Let's just charge all of them with attempted murder and lock them up for good. [commented on reddit via phone app from driver's seat of car in left lane on I-95]' (my characterization) - seems completely useless, in terms of actual harm-reduction.
What does seem clear is that drunk driving is caused by poor judgment and/or inadequate risk-assessment (its correlation with # miles driven could be a third factor worth mentioning). If we observe the two largest demographic groups among drunk drivers, young men and chronic alcoholics, it's clear that they share these characteristics - young men because their frontal cortex hasn't matured enough to reliably assess risk in general and chronic alcoholics because their constant drinking necessarily impedes good decision-making. If we're not developing solutions that target those particular deficiencies (i.e. not a small chance at having a harsh, but essentially abstract punishment a year or more in the future), I don't think we'll see real progress on this front.
In any case, I certainly don't think bringing enhanced surveillance into privately-owned vehicles is the solution.
Instead of treating everyone like a drunk driver they should just better enforce the current laws. Make a single DUI a ten-year loss of license and a DUI leading to a fatality an automatic life without parole and you will see a lot fewer people doing it.
I like that idea, but we just have to figure out a way to prevent unlicensed people from driving that isn't also a terrible idea. I don't want to have to scan my driver license just to start my car.
Making it so they don't have to drive, and then threatening them with severe punishment if they are ever caught driving without holding (regardless of possession) a license, should be feasible.
However, that requires making it so they don't have to drive. Nothing's gonna stop them it they have no alternative.
Perhaps if our media wasn't constantly peppering people with advertisements about alcohol and we weren't constantly trying to equate alcohol with social status, things here might be a whole lot different. But no, we sell t-shirts with phrases like "Chardonnay all Day" and "mommy needs wine" and have beer ads equating drinking with a good happy life, and then we wonder why people are experiencing alcoholism at a skyrocketing rate.
instead a Gov agency says that we all now need to jump through a hoop because of drunk drivers.
It doesn't help that culturally people get extremely defensive about alcohol as well. Even if you bring up its huge negatives people will do everything to deny it
Honestly I think this is a really good thing. I expect a huge backlash but when you look at it, there's really no good arguments against.
What about freedoms? Unlike speech, you don't have a Constitutional right to drive drunk. I think even hard libertarians would balk at arguing "people should have the right to down 8 beers and then tear up 70mph on the highway". Because unlike freedom of expression drunk driving really does impact others, it's one of the leading causes of death and "I drive completely fine when drunk" is something nobody can say confidently.
What if the BAC fails when you're not drunk? After all BACs aren't 100% accurate. Now this really is a serious issue. But it's also something I really don't see happening. Because false positives in the BAC hurt sales, so auto manufacturers are going to skew towards false negatives. Capitalism is a really strong force, and capitalism says you don't want to prevent people from starting their car unless they are definitely drunk, because that generates bad coverage which ultimately hurts sales. Especially because the regulations are going in effect three years the earliest, so there's plenty of time to device better easier tests, so consumers aren't compelled to ditch your car for one with no BAC or a more reliable BAC.
Ok, but what if I'm drunk and there's a huge tornado or someone's chasing me and the only option is to drive recklessly? This is also an issue. But perhaps in that case there could be some emergency override which notifies law enforcement.
Ok, but what about speeding? The NTSB is not having vehicles check for speeding and they will not any time soon. Everyone speeds, on certain roads you actually put yourself in danger by driving under the speed limit, and speed limits are ultimately widely regarded as dumb. DUI laws are widely regarded as not dumb.
The bottom line is, unless there are really exceptional circumstances, you should not be driving drunk. And nobody is arguing that you should be allowed to drive drunk. So I think something which physically prevents you from driving drunk and breaking a near universally-accepted law, despite limiting your freedoms, is fine.
There are two good arguments against this that you didn't address at all. The first is on principle: things that you own shouldn't enforce laws against you. The second is practical: unless the machine always says "negative", false positives will happen, and you provide no solution for when they do.
Generally I agree with the principle that things you own should not be enforcing laws. I'm far more annoyed at the encroachment of the "nanny state" than I was in my younger days... So i'm sympathetic to the viewpoint...
But this feels more like "design machine with appropriate safeguards so owner cant kill self/others" ... like SawStop or Bosch REAXX on circular saws or a Riving Knife on a table saw. Designing a tool/device/vehicle to avoid injury, especially when that injury can impact people around them is a good thing. Trains have devices to (attempt) to ensure the driver is paying attention to prevent accidents. With numbers like "over 10000 deaths due to drunk driving each year" and "over 100000 injuries related to drunk driving accidents each year" it starts to look like allowing people to operate these vehicles while under the influence is something the manufacturers should be preventing to avoid injury to the public.
It's interesting that those that are diagnosed don't have driving restrictions like people with epilepsy since they are actually intoxicated by it, but that might just be because it's so rare that most people don't know or refuse to believe it exists. They'll have it the worst if this actually gets mandated and deployed.
Wait until they use the driver-facing cameras to (try to) detect cannabis intoxication and the cameras think everyone with squinting eyes is intoxicated.
"43,000 people were killed last year, the greatest number in 16 years"
True, but there were also 250 billion more miles traveled than 16 years ago and a population of roughly 40 million more people. So though the raw number is higher, the traffic fatalities per mile traveled and per capita is actually lower than it was back then.
Not more, a lot more! Public transit is about the entire system. To make a difference we need a lot more transit. A small extension is generally not enough to be useful to anyone, but a large extension could actually be useful. Running transit only during rush hour is useless, as it running transit every hour, you really should aim to run every line every 5 minutes all day (and every half hour late nights) - if you don't cars are not that expensive and so well worth the convenience.
The republicans are right when they say most transit funding is just throwing good money after bad. Most transit projects spend far too much on making things look nice and often have been given bad routes that will never result in anything useful.
The first paragraph is useful for every country. The second is obviously US specific.
We could eliminate food inspection and driver's licenses. That would increase liberty, but I don't think most people would find the freedom worthy of the cost.
No, but I think GP’s point is that there will always be a tradeoff between personal liberty and safety. We can argue about where the line should be, but it needs to be drawn somewhere between the two extremes.
But GP's OP is not saying there shouldn't be a line, rather that it is that line that will likely be crossed in guise of public safety to unburden us from the burden of having liberties.
Food, water, stuff like that have potential to kill off everyone. Drunk drivers on the other hand are not likely to ever pose an existential threat. So I tend to agree with those who insist that, of course there must be regulation, there must be informed discussion, no we shall not consult the i-ching, but definitely loss of liberties require an exceptionally high public good threshold to be considered.
tldr; to keep that line in an optimal space between the extremes, clearly two opposing forces are necessary.
Both you and the GP are suggesting slippery slopes. I think it’s reasonable to think that checking every single driver, every single time they drive, for alcohol use is an invasion of privacy, especially since the vast, vast majority of drivers are not driving drunk. That also doesn’t mean privacy is dead or that it’s time to end food inspection.
What do driver's licenses add to safety? The only people they prevent from driving are someone who is crazy enough to drive a car without knowing how, but draws the line at driving without government approval.
If you had to do continuing education to renew your license every X years then it may add to safety. But as it exists today it seems to be more of a form of ID than anything to do with a vehicle. When someone gets hired at a new job (USA) a drivers license can be used as a part to show citizenship, which has nothing to do with driving.
People who want to drive and don't have licenses (whether by their choice or not) are currently driving on the roads right now. Also some of the worst drivers I've ever seen all do have their driver's license.
While what you're saying does seem to make sense, sometimes the situation isn't always that simple.
Would you be okay with a drunk driver killing one of your family members? What if that could be prevented with tech like this? Does your personal liberty outweigh the need to keep people safe from tons of metal hurtling at them at insane speeds?
1. Buy a car because it’s required in order to literally feed yourself, or
2. Live in one of the highly desirable, expensive pre-war neighborhoods that remain walkable
Many Americans can’t just “give up cars” even if they wanted to. Car dependency is literally codified in out zoning and street building (MUTCD)
Maybe if car dependency wasn’t such a requirement in order to live, maybe if everyone could easily walk to the bar, we wouldn’t need alcohol detection in cars.
> Maybe if car dependency wasn’t such a requirement in order to live, maybe if everyone could easily walk to the bar, we wouldn’t need alcohol detection in cars.
This is the goal that is worth spending political action on, not snake oil remedies designed only to advance the careers of politicians peddling them.
>Buy a car because it’s required in order to literally feed yourself
One doesn't eat a car, nor need a car. It sure is nice to have but other options exists for most trips. An electric bicycle makes it easy to go anywhere needed. Even a non electric bicycle can go a great distance.
On the other hand I just looked up the average commute to work distance and it is way higher than I would have though, 27.6miles [1] Still a long distance but not too long for an ebike.
I usually WFH, but that's about the distance to my job if I take the highway, where bikes aren't allowed. If I were to go using side streets it would easily be double that.
Wouldn't be looking forward to a 50 mile ebike commute!
Truly what a self-indulgent, privileged comment from someone who evidently doesn't share the lives, practical needs or economic circumstances of millions of people who truly, really, fucking absolutely need cars for their daily living needs. Oh hey.. Let's flippantly recommend an "ebike"... Because of course that's the perfect solution for all the ranchers, farmers, far-suburban residents and millions of people who live in neighborhoods and cities where public transit and bikes are absurdly impractical for the jobs they need to do each day to pay the bills.
Truly, some of the people on HN are incredible at taking their own little bubbles of life and just cluelessly extrapolating them outward to any situation without a single pause. It's laughable.
Freedom is the notion that it is more important to protect the innocent than to punish the guilty. The burden of proof falls to those who would abrogate our liberty, to show beyond a shadow of doubt that their measures will be effective and worthwhile. The standard of evidence must be higher than "I think it'll work!" Prove that it will really prevent those deaths before you get a second word.
Many americans would rather that whole swaths of the population, including their own family members, die painfully then wear a mask in a grocery store.
Don’t know why you put safety in quotes. You’re implying that this won’t make streets safer, by reducing drunk driving. But reducing drunk driving would in fact make streets safer.
Our goal should be to have zero deaths related to common car usage and driving. For example, the backup camera is there to help reduce the number of people backing up over their own kids. This is a good thing.
You can argue that this system may not be the correct implementation to reduce drunk driving. You can argue other things might actually be better. But don’t claim that personal liberty is at stake for people when 43,000 people lost their personal liberty when their lives ended. Why don’t you care about their personal liberty?
I'm not aware of any technology reliable, trustworthy, affordable, and quick enough to accomplish said goal without regularly inconveniencing a significantly larger portion of drivers who may need their vehicles in other emergencies. If you could provide a mechanism that didn't infringe non-drunk drivers rights I'd be more apt to accept this idea.
I'd also need to know an override mechanism exists because it seems like certain rare situations could arise where you need to operate a vehicle intoxicated, e.g. fleeing for your life in defense with a relatively low risk of injuring someone comparatively. I'm sitting at home sipping a scotch and hear an intruder come in who for some reason is an abusive person after me specifically in my life. I phone the police but also decide it's best if I can safely flee the area. Maybe the police could override it remotely, I don't know. Overall the edge cases seem difficult to deal with and infringe on others liberties. We start talking about the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few and trolly problems with different counts of people on different tracks.
I'm just throwing some hypothetical out, it may not be good, but my point is that rare situations can occur and because you were partaking in a legal activity like drinking, due to an emergency change in situation that wasn't predictable, you suddenly need to drive because the risk is now higher than drunk driving. Perhaps a tornado is approaching your house or abusive spouse is out to kill you...
How about: when you engage the override, a light on your car turns on, as a signal to everyone else on the road that you may be under the influence. Cops who see the light can consider it "reasonable suspicion" to pull you over.
So I'm expected to waive my Fourth Amendment rights because it's an emergency? Maybe you trust cops to not be power-tripping assholes, but I sure as hell don't.
Many states have quite low legal limits and it's broadly acknowledged that being tired, distracted, angry, stressed, etc. is almost or as bad as driving over the legal limit.
https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/advice/best-cars-blog/20...
In California it's .08. If for example I was at a party and a friend had some kind of medical emergency I feel it would be reasonable to take them to an ER despite being at .08 or .10 while being very cautious (assuming others were also not sober).
I know many people that live outside the US take a zero tolerance policy to drinking and driving in the sense that if you are going to drive you don't drink at all and I applaud that. I take the more practical approach of knowing how many drinks I can have at my body weight and can for example have a glass or 2 of wine during a 2 hour dinner but no more because my BAC with 2 drinks is under .08 and each hour 1 drink is metabolized.
I do fully acknowledge the more people drink the worse their judgement as to whether they are safe to drive so I expect many will get angry at me for the above. From what I recall most DUIs are for multiples of the legal limit but I can't find a source at the moment.
FYI, the way it works in most states is that 0.08 is the "per se" limit. this means that having a BAC >= 0.08 is enough for a conviction. it does not mean you're guaranteed to be fine if your BAC is below that. if you get pulled over for any reason with a BAC >= 0.04, there is a good chance that you get arrested and face charges anyway. it's just a bit more work for the prosecution.
During the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, tens of thousands of people escaped by driving through the fire. Statistically some of them were probably over the limit.
And the police were most likely too busy at the time to override lots of alcohol detection systems.
And how reliable are the Alcohol Detection Systems in a smoky environment?
Doesn't matter. That sentence is going to be read aloud on every television news program, and copied in every article about this, and is never going to be given any context. It's verbatim from the press release. That's how mainstream news works in the US, especially when it's a government press release. Putting a US government press release into context sounds like a very Russian or Chinese thing to do.
> True, but there were also 250 billion more miles traveled than 16 years ago and a population of roughly 40 million more people. So though the raw number is higher, the traffic fatalities per mile traveled and per capita is actually lower than it was back then.
OK, but it's the greatest number of fatalities per mile traveled in 14 years, and the highest number per capita in 13 years, though.
The recent trend upwards is pretty alarming and it's not worth pretending otherwise, even if you're dead set against this solution. Both statistics are up over 20% from the lows of a decade ago, 30% in absolute numbers.
Personally I'm pretty convinced by the case of rising phone use and vehicle size in the same period and would like to see those addressed.
All of those would be great things to point out for context, but this article chose only one number to use. The same goes for talking about causes, as you point out by mentioning phone use and vehicle construction. I can add one more to that list: cars equipped with all the latest gadgets that do everything except help the driver focus on other vehicles and road conditions (vividly illustrated by one of those "Mayhem" commercials for Allstate).
> All of those would be great things to point out for context, but this article chose only one number to use
13 or 14 vs 16 years isn't all that different, and most people understand absolute numbers better, so if you have to use one it seems like a good choice and isn't misleading with statistics, as the OP implies.
It's also probably because of all the SUVs that everyone wants nowadays. The greatest pressure against mandates alcohol test devices on cars should come from the auto industry itself.
In my country, the most drivers caught under the influence this year were using drugs rather than booze. Alcohol testers do not detect drugs. Also good luck driving a car with such a device to flee a fire or having the kid eat oranges while you're driving.
Fantastic. This is a huge win for everybody. After midnight more than 1 in 8 drivers on the road are legally intoxicated (in the US). Driving is a liberty, not a right.
I can understand why this would be limited to alcohol (at least starting out) as alcohol leaves the body rapidly and the diminished capacity leaves with the alcohol. Eventually I would like to see this applied to a variety of intoxicants.
Motorcycles (usually) have regular tech checkups, proper lights and turn indicators, powerful brakes and other accident-avoidance technology.
Additionally, unlike e-scooters and e-bikes, you need a license to ride them, further reducing the likelihood of incidents, and at least here in Europe you have two different license categories - higher powered motorcycles are only available at the age of 20 or later.
Cars should be limited to .5g forward acceleration, and .5g/s change of acceleration, and you should need the full stroke of the accelerator to get those figures. In other words, all throttle maps stuck in “eco” mode forever. No more twitchy aggressive throttles. Then we won’t have so many drivers murdering school kids in crosswalks because oopsie I tapped the wrong pedal.
Can you provide a scenario where to avoid an accident the best choice is to add speed, which would have the effect of worsening the accident if you are wrong?
Limiting acceleration isn't a great solution, but your idea that accelerating cripples avoidance makes even less sense.
> Can you provide a scenario where to avoid an accident the best choice is to add speed, which would have the effect of worsening the accident if you are wrong?
you're in the middle lane with cars to your left, right, and rear. the one on the left doesn't see you and starts merging into your lane. if you slam on the brakes, you wouldn't be legally at fault for whatever happens next, but it would probably be best to briskly accelerate.
> Or.. honk your horn? Slow down without "slamming on the brakes"?
this depends on the assumption that other drivers are aware of their surroundings and following you at a safe distance. unfortunately that's not usually the case on roads in my area. you could try that, or you could avoid the entire altercation by escaping to the open space ahead of you.
> In your scenario, lets make one small change, instead of the car being behind you it is in front... does accelerating help?
is this supposed to be some kind of gotcha? let me make my point more clear. your car has brakes, an accelerator, and a steering wheel. use whichever one of those takes you in the opposite direction of the impending collision and doesn't require other drivers to avoid you instead.
It literally also just doesn't make sense. In order for your car to actually accelerate a meaningful amount to "dodge" an accident it would have to be VERY powerful, and most likely naturally aspirated. I have a GTI with 230hp but it has enough turbo lag that if you aren't already halfway into the throttle it won't go anywhere in the time it takes for the accident to occur, never mind adding onto that the time it takes the human brain to realize something is going on and think through that moving forward would actually improve the situation. There's a reason why race car drivers have rules about how you should drive around other cars, in an attempt to PREVENT dangerous situations instead of expecting fallible humans to always do the perfect thing in dangerous situations.
It's the same thinking that people who carry guns around all day do. They think they're the protagonist in an action movie, that they can hero their way through any problem, and any limit to that is a violation of their rights.
Demolition man. Iconic scene where he gets a bunch of tickets for using profanity as a substitute for toilet paper. What a bizarre movie and what a bizarre idea of a future that was.
Yes, absolutely. I often think about whether we should just go to the natural logical conclusion. Using GPS and speed data to automatically fine you if you speed and deduct from your linked bank account - you can contest this but you must pay first.
I dislike cameras as it feels like you're constantly performing and if you slip up, you don't get to learn, instead your mistake is archived and put up for others to scrutinize.
I get that we, as humans, enjoy documenting our world, but the idea a spy which will no doubt store data that is accessible either remotely or locally with the right tool, is now and has become so pervasive will probably be considered one of the most grotesque things future societies will look back on and think we were insane for ever allowing. So much of our history is lost to the ages, and frankly, it's best it stays that way.
There are toll highways, operated by local governments, that track when you get on and off using cameras at fixed points. They could do this today and choose not to. Probably because they know everyone speeds and that if they did, people would avoid the highway and revenue would drop.
No I think the idea that we allowed monkeys to operate 2 tonnes of machinery after some unspecified amount of depressants will be looked back on as a wild time in history that no one wants to return to.
Like "and they just started selling bullet proof backpacks instead of adapting the Holy Documents by the Founding Fathers (pbuh)?"
GPS has errors, outages. I actually have such a GPS device at work on my desk with a speeding alarm active and it does trigger occasionally, even with the indoor GPS repeater on.
Tough on speeding restrictions are also stupid. The Italians and Portugese found better ways to deter speeding: red lights with speed sensors at the entrance of low speed zones, localities and cameras with license plate readers that measure your average speed. You either get a red light or a fine for generally speeding as opposed to speeding for five seconds to overtake a slow car.
The printers would run out of paper and would be distracting. More likely the fine would be auto-deducted from the soon to be government run blockchain that is shimmed into all the banks we use. Also more likely the car would pull over and refuse to let people out until the police arrive.
Here [1] is a video Utopia that describes our potential future.
When most cars have auto braking, you'll just see a new car, walk out, it will immediately stop and any car without tech in it will slam in to the back of the new car. So there will soon be no old cars left.
211 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 236 ms ] threadHopefully that's what will happen here. The NTSB only recommends things to the NHTSA. So this proposal hasn't even gotten as far as the above example.
I’m against a system that refuses to let me drive because it thinks I’m drunk. Or a system that would prevent me from breaking the speed limit, at my discretion, e.g. in an emergency.
Depending on the system's accuracy, this could be a fair compromise. Alternatively: a black box record in case something goes wrong. Less preventative. But deterring and reasonable.
I've been involved in an situation that resulted in a fatality and trying to rescue the victim and for an untrained responder your ability to think and process gets chopped down to around 25% of what it is normally. That is probably worse if the victim is someone you know. Now you want to argue that those people should be driving 100 mph through the streets blowing through red lights and whatever at their own discretion like that solves problems.
People need to call 911 and get the ambulance, which can stabilize the patient, to come to them. They can run code red and are trained in how to run red lights and get around traffic safely. They do it for a living and they're emotionally detached from the emergency.
Not to mention that the tires on the average vehicle shouldn't be driven that fast and they're probably nearly bald due to lack of maintenance.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-woman-str...
Your strawman is naked. You should dress him in some plausible deniability.
There's nothing in the comment you are replying to to suggest in the slightest way that he is in favor of those things. Just because he's against the flavor of Skynet(TM) you want doesn't mean he's in favor of whatever random "bad thing" you want to paint him as in favor of.
https://jalopnik.com/self-driving-car-tech-forgotten-by-auto...
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2017-01-12/pdf/2016-31059.p...
>Assuming a final rule is issued in 2019, this would mean that the phase-in period would begin in 2021, and all vehicles subject to that final rule would be required to comply in 2023.
See also, https://www.electronicdesign.com/blogs/contributed-blogs/arc... And here's is my 2017 post on alt.cyberpunk about the ruling and a link to an articles about it back then, https://groups.google.com/g/alt.cyberpunk/c/YpRasEtoOwA , https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/06/21/killing-car-privacy... and https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/danger-ahead-governmen...
I wonder if we'd see speed limits increase if everyone followed them as-posted? Because right now there seems to be this assumption from both sides that everyone is speeding, so they post 70 because they want 80, or 25 because they want 30, etc.
While DUI is a legitimate problem, it isn't clear to me though what exactly the NTSB is proposing here? They have those "breathe into" systems (interlocks), but they have hygiene and maintenance limitations. Unclear how driver monitoring systems can determine if someone is DUI (in particular when you look at edge cases, like disabled drivers that move atypically while still be authorized to drive).
PS - I suspect, but cannot show data, that existing upcoming safety technology may decrease DUI caused fatalities in particular "driverless" automations like lane centering, automatic lane-changes, and autonomous navigation. While I don't consider this technology mature, it may still be safer than an inebriated driver.
https://www.dadss.org/touch-technology
They also appear to have other approaches as well, but this one seems like it would be almost transparent to the operation of the car.
Honestly I have zero objection to something that worked in this fashion - I suspect it would save a ton of lives. I think the knee jerk reaction that it's somehow a big brother kind of thing is a bit disingenuous, like saying "The government shouldn't interfere with my ability to drive drunk and potentially hurt people". I think this is much more akin to when wearing seat belts became the law - people moaned and complained but at the end of the day it's better for both themselves and others in the vehicle.
The speeding thing is completely unrelated and really shouldn't be mixed into this - how about solving one problem at a time well, instead of lumping a bunch together and solving none. I've had friends badly injured by drunk drivers, and in all the cases the drunk driver wasn't exceeding the posted speed limit. In one they just smashed into a parked car and hit them on the sidewalk, in one they swerved into oncoming traffic and collided head on, and the last drove into a store at full speed. Thankfully these were three different people I know, and not one incredibly unlucky person. ;)
While current self-driving technology is obviously unsafe when given total control, I think it could be turned into an extraordinarily effective safety system: program it to only take accident avoidance measures and low-level corrections like lane centering, and crank up the thresholds so it only gets invoked in clearly dangerous scenarios.
Yeah, "speed limits" are primarily a political game, not anything based in reality. Roads designed for 55 get labeled 45 (in 1990) then 40 (2000) then 35 (2010) and then "road dieted" to 25 (2020). Everyone's "speeding" on paper, but not in reality -- they're going the speed they're were always supposed to go. But politically, people just decided slower=nicer for their particular stretch of street (they already live there, so 'walkability' is just fine for them, strip out all the lanes, throw garbage into the street, whatever) without really caring about how badly it would impact public transportation for everyone in general. It's a textbook "tragedy of the commons" problem.
If you enforce this by vehicle, everyone's going to flip out (because the fake-posted-speed-limit is way below what any sensible person is actually safely driving) and you'll see a significant number of people instantly jailbreak their cars to fix it.
This is utter absurd, it's definitely based in the reality of 1/2 m*v^2. Decreasing the speed decreases the kinetic energy of impacts, decreasing injuries and deaths. That's the reality.
The fact that American roads were designed as the beastly stroads and 6-lanes inner city avenues that are present all around doesn't mean their speed limits should follow that design, the speed limit should follow what utilisation occurs around the road.
You might be right that in some places speed limits can be a political stunt of sorts. Basic physics and the examples of multiple Western countries which achieved a less deadly traffic by implementing stricter speed limits (among other measures) should show you part of the reality you feel is lacking.
Look at Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and so on. USA's road fatalities per billion km-vehicle are on average double, you can do better and kill less people, in total amount of road fatalities the USA is only behind Brazil.
No road in a city centre should allow for faster than 40 km/h traffic around people. A road (non-motorway) with major separation between automobiles and people in a city shouldn't exceed 60 km/h. Traffic even flows better with larger windows for smart traffic control, lower the speed, lower the average travel time.
USA infatuation with left turns across roads posted at 45 mph or higher lead to deadly T-bone collisions. European roads often have roundabouts which naturally slow traffic and a collision would be a glancing side kiss. USA foot gun left turns kill people by design.
Some of those little farming towns are now rapidly frowning suburbs, teeming with housing tracts, and those fields are now shopping center upon shopping center.
I also suspect many people favor letting some legally over the limit people drive, at least short distances, in certain emergency situations, like transporting relatives who can’t walk away from a fire. Exactly what those situations are seems like a subject of contention.
There’s also the related interesting case of moving vehicles on private property. For instance, a couple has a few cocktails at home, their car is towards the bottom of a sloped driveway under a tree, and there’s an unexpected flash flood or high wind warning. Should the car prevent them from driving it forward a few feet to safety?
I think that is a pretty good solution. In any emergency/ edge case / false positive scenario, you are still able operate your car. But a "pull me over" light goes on so that cops will know to double check in "regular" scenarios.
That's not the entire truth. They want speed limiters that _can be disabled_, in the same way as the Auto Off emissions control feature. And, right now, the discussion is leaning towards first employing mandatory speeding chimes - and doing away with speed limiting functionality altogether.
If there were speed limiters, it would probably be reasonable to increase highway speeds in places where they are excessively low, but to also enforce the current speed limits on residential streets as hard limits or even lower them.
This would massively increase safety while eliminating any concern about speeding tickets at normal highway speeds that people actually drive at.
The idea of having to blow into a tube every time I start my car seems outrageous, of course, but so many deaths every year in the US are due to alcohol-impaired driving that I'd almost be willing to support it.
Of course, given that they're only calling for new cars to be so equipped, we'd be looking at a very long period of time in which people prone to driving under the influence would refuse to buy newer cars, justifying it by saying that the systems don't understand how their alcohol tolerance works.
> The passage defining what Congress actually wants describes a system that can "passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired; and... prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected." This is only half of the proposed system, though. The other half specifically references blood alcohol content, saying the technology must "passively and accurately detect whether the blood alcohol concentration of a driver of a motor vehicle is equal to or greater than the blood alcohol concentration described in section 163(a) of title 23, United States Code; and... prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if a blood alcohol concentration above the legal limit is detected."
The first half is impossible in a car that has assistance features. You can't use machine learning to figure out if a driver using lane-assistance and radar cruise control on a highway is drunk because they're hardly driving at all. There are no inputs to analyse.
The second half is literally impossible. You cannot passively detect a driver's blood alcohol. You can actively detect it by having interlocks in the car but they have to be calibrated regularly and it's not passive at all.
This is a Timmy Turner wish, not a law.
There's a solid connection between DUI enforcement and reduction in deaths. We've all heard of crashes involving someone with multiple DUI arrests. These offenders need identifying, help, supervision, and maybe removing their driving privileges.
https://www.safehome.org/resources/dui-statistics/
Perhaps then mandate that cars be compatible with some standard for such systems to try to bring the cost of them down - the actual alcohol sensor is mere cents, but integrating it into todays cars aftermarket is often very costly.
I’ve seen people do interesting things to avoid getting interlocks installed. In that state if you owned a business an interlock must be installed in all company vehicles. People will sign over vehicles to family members. Some buy a beater car to have the interlock installed on and only start the car a couple times a month to log the minimum amount of starts required for compliance which is checked monthly for an additional fee.
As you said, the sentence is suspended - because the person agrees to the option of staying out of jail with conditions which the person agrees to comply with. If the person doesn't want that option then they do the jail time.
From what I have seen (obviously laws vary by location) it’s jail time (typically 365 days suspended) AND interlock. Not a choice between the two.
I guess you are free to not drive in a month, but then the tester will need to stay attached to your car longer till you have demonstrated you are rehabilitated.
Oh and by the way the interlock calibration installation / removal / calibration business is privately owned and only open Monday through Friday 9-11am 2-4pm by appointment only.
Actually not driving would show your claims (under penalty of perjury) to be lies. Courts do not like that at all.
They should charge people with attempted homicide with a deadly weapon while under the influence.
Like the side object detection and backup cameras, mandatory electronics are great for component manufacturers. For consumers it increases initial costs and reduces resale value after some years due to difficulty of affordably fixing old electronics. Much of this is financial punishment on the poor and working class.
Here in Germany, in almost all urban and urban-surrounding places you're not stuck to expensive taxis to get home after a bar night, you simply hop into a bus. In rural areas, the situation looks different, and correspondingly the DUI rates are higher there.
That said, I once read that the most important enforcement factors, with regard to actually reducing DUIs, were 1) increasing the likelihood of being caught and 2) minimizing the time between being caught and experiencing consequences. Notably, severity of punishment wasn't a significant factor. I know that states will differ in enforcement approaches, but the US states I've lived in haven't seemed at all interested in adopting a data-driven perspective - what I've seen has been a very low likelihood of DUI detection coupled with prosecution that can take a year or more for a routine DUI (let's not forget needlessly harsh punishments that are more likely to destroy one's family or finances than decrease the likelihood of future DUI...).
The contentious nature of this topic seems to make it hard to find rational discussions online. I've found plenty of emotional anecdotes, but few evidence-based suggestions mentioned (aside from the obvious but unrealistic suggestion to make cars unnecessary...). I'm no expert, but the "traditional American" perspective - 'Drunk drivers are horrible people who will go to hell when they die. Let's just charge all of them with attempted murder and lock them up for good. [commented on reddit via phone app from driver's seat of car in left lane on I-95]' (my characterization) - seems completely useless, in terms of actual harm-reduction.
What does seem clear is that drunk driving is caused by poor judgment and/or inadequate risk-assessment (its correlation with # miles driven could be a third factor worth mentioning). If we observe the two largest demographic groups among drunk drivers, young men and chronic alcoholics, it's clear that they share these characteristics - young men because their frontal cortex hasn't matured enough to reliably assess risk in general and chronic alcoholics because their constant drinking necessarily impedes good decision-making. If we're not developing solutions that target those particular deficiencies (i.e. not a small chance at having a harsh, but essentially abstract punishment a year or more in the future), I don't think we'll see real progress on this front.
In any case, I certainly don't think bringing enhanced surveillance into privately-owned vehicles is the solution.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32902090
(Additional information about the crash indicates that only 5 of the 8 passengers in the pickup were restrained)
So eight people were crammed into a pickup, 3 weren't wearing seatbelts.
instead a Gov agency says that we all now need to jump through a hoop because of drunk drivers.
Great. Just great.
Imagine the compliance.
Suppose it decides you're intoxicated after you've hit highway speed?
Will it store its findings, to be retrieved later?
What about freedoms? Unlike speech, you don't have a Constitutional right to drive drunk. I think even hard libertarians would balk at arguing "people should have the right to down 8 beers and then tear up 70mph on the highway". Because unlike freedom of expression drunk driving really does impact others, it's one of the leading causes of death and "I drive completely fine when drunk" is something nobody can say confidently.
What if the BAC fails when you're not drunk? After all BACs aren't 100% accurate. Now this really is a serious issue. But it's also something I really don't see happening. Because false positives in the BAC hurt sales, so auto manufacturers are going to skew towards false negatives. Capitalism is a really strong force, and capitalism says you don't want to prevent people from starting their car unless they are definitely drunk, because that generates bad coverage which ultimately hurts sales. Especially because the regulations are going in effect three years the earliest, so there's plenty of time to device better easier tests, so consumers aren't compelled to ditch your car for one with no BAC or a more reliable BAC.
Ok, but what if I'm drunk and there's a huge tornado or someone's chasing me and the only option is to drive recklessly? This is also an issue. But perhaps in that case there could be some emergency override which notifies law enforcement.
Ok, but what about speeding? The NTSB is not having vehicles check for speeding and they will not any time soon. Everyone speeds, on certain roads you actually put yourself in danger by driving under the speed limit, and speed limits are ultimately widely regarded as dumb. DUI laws are widely regarded as not dumb.
The bottom line is, unless there are really exceptional circumstances, you should not be driving drunk. And nobody is arguing that you should be allowed to drive drunk. So I think something which physically prevents you from driving drunk and breaking a near universally-accepted law, despite limiting your freedoms, is fine.
But this feels more like "design machine with appropriate safeguards so owner cant kill self/others" ... like SawStop or Bosch REAXX on circular saws or a Riving Knife on a table saw. Designing a tool/device/vehicle to avoid injury, especially when that injury can impact people around them is a good thing. Trains have devices to (attempt) to ensure the driver is paying attention to prevent accidents. With numbers like "over 10000 deaths due to drunk driving each year" and "over 100000 injuries related to drunk driving accidents each year" it starts to look like allowing people to operate these vehicles while under the influence is something the manufacturers should be preventing to avoid injury to the public.
https://www.palmpartners.com/auto-brewery-syndrome-body-prod...
It's interesting that those that are diagnosed don't have driving restrictions like people with epilepsy since they are actually intoxicated by it, but that might just be because it's so rare that most people don't know or refuse to believe it exists. They'll have it the worst if this actually gets mandated and deployed.
Here are more examples:
https://www.columbusdefensefirm.com/causes-false-positive-br...
True, but there were also 250 billion more miles traveled than 16 years ago and a population of roughly 40 million more people. So though the raw number is higher, the traffic fatalities per mile traveled and per capita is actually lower than it was back then.
The republicans are right when they say most transit funding is just throwing good money after bad. Most transit projects spend far too much on making things look nice and often have been given bad routes that will never result in anything useful.
The first paragraph is useful for every country. The second is obviously US specific.
Food, water, stuff like that have potential to kill off everyone. Drunk drivers on the other hand are not likely to ever pose an existential threat. So I tend to agree with those who insist that, of course there must be regulation, there must be informed discussion, no we shall not consult the i-ching, but definitely loss of liberties require an exceptionally high public good threshold to be considered.
tldr; to keep that line in an optimal space between the extremes, clearly two opposing forces are necessary.
While what you're saying does seem to make sense, sometimes the situation isn't always that simple.
I don't see why not, as the US was founded on the principle behind this.
Does your personal liberty outweigh the need to keep your family safe from tons of metal hurtling at them at insane speeds?
1. Buy a car because it’s required in order to literally feed yourself, or
2. Live in one of the highly desirable, expensive pre-war neighborhoods that remain walkable
Many Americans can’t just “give up cars” even if they wanted to. Car dependency is literally codified in out zoning and street building (MUTCD)
Maybe if car dependency wasn’t such a requirement in order to live, maybe if everyone could easily walk to the bar, we wouldn’t need alcohol detection in cars.
This is the goal that is worth spending political action on, not snake oil remedies designed only to advance the careers of politicians peddling them.
One doesn't eat a car, nor need a car. It sure is nice to have but other options exists for most trips. An electric bicycle makes it easy to go anywhere needed. Even a non electric bicycle can go a great distance.
On the other hand I just looked up the average commute to work distance and it is way higher than I would have though, 27.6miles [1] Still a long distance but not too long for an ebike.
[1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-way-...
Wouldn't be looking forward to a 50 mile ebike commute!
Truly, some of the people on HN are incredible at taking their own little bubbles of life and just cluelessly extrapolating them outward to any situation without a single pause. It's laughable.
We cannot imagine a fleet of electric bike pulling one truck-trailer, in the spirit of slaves pulling blocks toward an Egyptian pyramid.
Our goal should be to have zero deaths related to common car usage and driving. For example, the backup camera is there to help reduce the number of people backing up over their own kids. This is a good thing.
You can argue that this system may not be the correct implementation to reduce drunk driving. You can argue other things might actually be better. But don’t claim that personal liberty is at stake for people when 43,000 people lost their personal liberty when their lives ended. Why don’t you care about their personal liberty?
I'd also need to know an override mechanism exists because it seems like certain rare situations could arise where you need to operate a vehicle intoxicated, e.g. fleeing for your life in defense with a relatively low risk of injuring someone comparatively. I'm sitting at home sipping a scotch and hear an intruder come in who for some reason is an abusive person after me specifically in my life. I phone the police but also decide it's best if I can safely flee the area. Maybe the police could override it remotely, I don't know. Overall the edge cases seem difficult to deal with and infringe on others liberties. We start talking about the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few and trolly problems with different counts of people on different tracks.
I'm just throwing some hypothetical out, it may not be good, but my point is that rare situations can occur and because you were partaking in a legal activity like drinking, due to an emergency change in situation that wasn't predictable, you suddenly need to drive because the risk is now higher than drunk driving. Perhaps a tornado is approaching your house or abusive spouse is out to kill you...
How about: when you engage the override, a light on your car turns on, as a signal to everyone else on the road that you may be under the influence. Cops who see the light can consider it "reasonable suspicion" to pull you over.
> Cops who see the light can consider it "reasonable suspicion" to pull you over.
If you're fleeing a natural disaster, the cops will be fleeing too, so they aren't going to pull you over.
If you're fleeing someone who wants to kill you, you want to be pulled over so you can receive police protection.
https://www.nfl.com/news/officer-apologizes-after-delaying-t...
https://www.ems1.com/airway-management/articles/video-man-be...
I'm sure you could come up with many more possible scenarios
I know many people that live outside the US take a zero tolerance policy to drinking and driving in the sense that if you are going to drive you don't drink at all and I applaud that. I take the more practical approach of knowing how many drinks I can have at my body weight and can for example have a glass or 2 of wine during a 2 hour dinner but no more because my BAC with 2 drinks is under .08 and each hour 1 drink is metabolized.
I do fully acknowledge the more people drink the worse their judgement as to whether they are safe to drive so I expect many will get angry at me for the above. From what I recall most DUIs are for multiples of the legal limit but I can't find a source at the moment.
And how reliable are the Alcohol Detection Systems in a smoky environment?
OK, but it's the greatest number of fatalities per mile traveled in 14 years, and the highest number per capita in 13 years, though.
The recent trend upwards is pretty alarming and it's not worth pretending otherwise, even if you're dead set against this solution. Both statistics are up over 20% from the lows of a decade ago, 30% in absolute numbers.
Personally I'm pretty convinced by the case of rising phone use and vehicle size in the same period and would like to see those addressed.
13 or 14 vs 16 years isn't all that different, and most people understand absolute numbers better, so if you have to use one it seems like a good choice and isn't misleading with statistics, as the OP implies.
In my country, the most drivers caught under the influence this year were using drugs rather than booze. Alcohol testers do not detect drugs. Also good luck driving a car with such a device to flee a fire or having the kid eat oranges while you're driving.
I can understand why this would be limited to alcohol (at least starting out) as alcohol leaves the body rapidly and the diminished capacity leaves with the alcohol. Eventually I would like to see this applied to a variety of intoxicants.
Additionally, unlike e-scooters and e-bikes, you need a license to ride them, further reducing the likelihood of incidents, and at least here in Europe you have two different license categories - higher powered motorcycles are only available at the age of 20 or later.
Limiting acceleration isn't a great solution, but your idea that accelerating cripples avoidance makes even less sense.
you're in the middle lane with cars to your left, right, and rear. the one on the left doesn't see you and starts merging into your lane. if you slam on the brakes, you wouldn't be legally at fault for whatever happens next, but it would probably be best to briskly accelerate.
You are not legally at fault for stopping to avoid an accident.
In your scenario, lets make one small change, instead of the car being behind you it is in front... does accelerating help?
this depends on the assumption that other drivers are aware of their surroundings and following you at a safe distance. unfortunately that's not usually the case on roads in my area. you could try that, or you could avoid the entire altercation by escaping to the open space ahead of you.
> In your scenario, lets make one small change, instead of the car being behind you it is in front... does accelerating help?
is this supposed to be some kind of gotcha? let me make my point more clear. your car has brakes, an accelerator, and a steering wheel. use whichever one of those takes you in the opposite direction of the impending collision and doesn't require other drivers to avoid you instead.
I've been driving for ~30 years and cant tell you when "accelerating" was my choice to avoid an accident.
I have had people attempt to change lanes without looking first. I honked and they stopped.
It is great to manufacture a situation where as you put it, people don't keep a safe distance yet the space in front of you is empty? Odd..
The more you post, the less sense you make. Perhaps read the response from the other guy as well?
It's the same thinking that people who carry guns around all day do. They think they're the protagonist in an action movie, that they can hero their way through any problem, and any limit to that is a violation of their rights.
Can't wait until they install a printer so they can just print the tickets out right into my car.
I dislike cameras as it feels like you're constantly performing and if you slip up, you don't get to learn, instead your mistake is archived and put up for others to scrutinize.
I get that we, as humans, enjoy documenting our world, but the idea a spy which will no doubt store data that is accessible either remotely or locally with the right tool, is now and has become so pervasive will probably be considered one of the most grotesque things future societies will look back on and think we were insane for ever allowing. So much of our history is lost to the ages, and frankly, it's best it stays that way.
Like "and they just started selling bullet proof backpacks instead of adapting the Holy Documents by the Founding Fathers (pbuh)?"
Tough on speeding restrictions are also stupid. The Italians and Portugese found better ways to deter speeding: red lights with speed sensors at the entrance of low speed zones, localities and cameras with license plate readers that measure your average speed. You either get a red light or a fine for generally speeding as opposed to speeding for five seconds to overtake a slow car.
Here [1] is a video Utopia that describes our potential future.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJYaXy5mmA8 [video]
https://www.columbusdefensefirm.com/causes-false-positive-br...
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