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Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

Well with self driving cars coming, will they be able to determine if they should let you take control? The technology to monitor eye movement is there and being able sense alcohol on your breath would not be that hard to pull off just by it sampling.

Listened to the whole 911 and the patience of the operator was just great.

"Sorry Mr. Peters, I cannot allow you take control of the car at this time, continued attempts to do so will result in total shutdown or notification of the authorities"

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Getting an accurate enough sample from your breath without cooperation and breathing into a tube is probably impossible. Even then there still is the question of whether that sample is actually human breath from the driver.

Apart from that it's probably not a good idea to let someone drive who doesn't have any recent-ish experience driving, especially in dangerous situations.

In Denmark the have talked about an alcohol-lock, so you can only start the car if you breathe into a tube. But that is probably easy to cheat if you want to.

Oh, it seems like it already exists: http://alcolockusa.com/compliance/index.php?route=common/hom...

It's required for repeat offenders in some states

The Dutch already had this, but there were too much issues, legal and technical, to sustain it. If the Danes are thinking about implementing, hopefully they can do it in a better way than the Dutch.

Here in Sweden, I don't know of any legislation but alochol locks are not unheard of. They are fitted to a lot of company work vehicles, and are increasingly popular in the cars of normal people who could never imagine themeselves drink driving because insurers will give discount.

It was in my local paper that the local district nurses were having trouble with them because they had to wash their hands in alcohol after each visit, and this was enough to make the car lock up sometimes, leaving them stranded waiting 30 minutes until they could try again and start the car and proceed to their next house call.

That's a good idea to punish people who never drink.

Also they tend to take a long time to boot in cold weather. Which is common here in Denmark.

In theory they would be great. In practice, well, we will have automatic cars before we have those.

Eye movement and speech changes are probably sufficient to indicate a warning for drink/drug driving (DUI), but even then the car should still run IMO.

Smoothness of ride is probably a very good indicator of impairment too.

There are numerous companies working on artificial noses that car manufacturers have been looking to integrate in order to have an equivalent of white noise generators but of course for smell.

There is no reason why just sampling the air for particular elements would not also be possible and improvement is always going to happen.

I can imagine not only having cars watch eye movement to eventually tell you to quit looking at your cell phone to having cars detect smoking and sensing children in the car and notifying you to stop. So alcohol present in a car should be a flag the car can at least suggest to you that it is concerned

>> Getting an accurate enough sample from your breath without cooperation and breathing into a tube is probably impossible.

> There are numerous companies working on artificial noses that car manufacturers have been looking to integrate in order to have an equivalent of white noise generators but of course for smell.

These are completely different things. To detect intoxication for drunk driving, you need to accurately estimate the concentration of alcohol in the driver's blood. Detecting the "smell" of alcohol in the car does not do that.

It's also likely impossible to detect blood alcohol concentration in real-life conditions by sampling ambient air (what if they're the DD driving home a bunch of drunks? what if the window's open? what if they had liquor spilled on them?).

My normal no-extras VW Golf does detect when I'm drowsy and suggest a coffee break. I am guessing it is sensing my steering movements.

I hadn't heard of this, their glossary says "evaluates steering wheel movements" - do you have any better explanation of it's detection mechanism?

I'm guessing it looks for sudden adjustments to stay in lane after micro-sleeps.

I have tried to reverse-engineer it, but not worked it out yet. It seems to work though.

In Sweden you can make long journeys on fairly straight roads through forest meeting only the occasional other vehicle, very rarely seeing a pedestrian, and mostly keeping an eye out for movement between the trees that may be a deer or elk or boar about to run out in front of you.

Deer make small dents, badgers are like hitting stones, wild pigs can write off the car and elk are absolutely lethal. You actually get taught that, if a collision is inevitable, to aim for the hind legs to maximize your chances of survival.

Must be much the same in much of the USA, Canada, Russia etc.

There used to be a lot of bumper stickers that said "I brake for xxx" of varying seriousness.

Then there is the "Brake for Moose". It's not a choice, it's a warning.

The Canadian Priest who baptized my cousin was decapitated when he drove his small car under a moose. They are truly massive animals.

Wildlife are definitely a danger for drivers in the more remote parts of the U.S. Personally, I survived an elk collision unscathed, and with minimal damage to my car because she was trying to jump down from a cut in the side of a mountain. She put a dent in my roof and smashed the windshield and one of the rear windows. On a level road I doubt it would have been a survivable crash. Elk are very large animals.

> detect when I'm drowsy

I think most people wouldn't be allowed to drive first thing in the morning commute to work and after 10 hours working on the drive home if this was enforced!

Exactly. And that’s a good thing, not a bad thing – unsafe drivers, especially in the morning or evening commute, are the main reason for negligent manslaughter (commonly called "car accident with death") on streets.

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