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Comment by arnsholt | Hacker News Reader

IIRC, the legal limit in Norway us basically the measurement error of the BAC tests; basically you should fail if you've had anything at all to drink.

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That was one of those things my Norwegian spouse made sure I knew beforehand. It is .02 or something like that, and I believe it is measured slightly differently.

He's also said that I can get penalized - through loss of license and other means - just by being a sober passenger with a drunk driver. It benefits me to make sure the other person is sober.

can a drunk passenger of a drunk driver be penalized as well?

That I'm not sure of, but I don't think so. Assumedly, the sober person is supposed to have the wherewithal to understand the danger the drunk driver is putting themselves and others. On the other hand, the drunk passenger might well be more drunk than the driver and be too impaired to make that judgement.

This makes me very uneasy.

If their field equipment is anything like SCRAM bracelets (same basic technology as a Breathalyzer) they're cutting all sorts of corners (demanding precise readings out of sensors that are running well outside their recommended operating environment with less calibration than recommended) and throwing false positives left and right.

Drunk driving penalties are too stiff to play fast and loose like that.

In Australia, we're breathalyzed and if it's positive we go back to the police station/mobile testing unit for a blood test, so the breathalyzer is really only an early indicator.

> Vidar Refvik, director of police at the Justice Ministry, said police will use the same combination of "breathalyser" and blood tests to enforce the new law as they did the old one. He predicted the lower limit will yield anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 more arrests, a rise of about 15-20 percent.

Seems like Norway would be the same.

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