How many people rushing to the hospital with a pregnant wife in the back will no longer make it before giving birth?
If you're already in the actual process of giving birth, you definitely shouldn't be in a car going anywhere. The last thing you want to do with a pregnant person in labor is drive recklessly and endanger the lives of everyone involved including passengers of other vehicles and pedestrians.
If you have a medical emergency, you should call an ambulance. You're not a trained emergency vehicle driver. You're stressed and potentially in shock. You're not safe to drive. If you drive in such a reckless way that you're indistinguishable from a drunk driver, you're not safe to drive and you're a danger to yourself and everyone else.
(edit: I don't have a strong opinion on the original subject, but I think you're right. I just don't like your example, hence my comment)
Firstly, I've seen people who have DWI get a special license to drive to work and to get groceries. We simply do not have the public transit infrastructure. Come back with this when we have decent coverage of public transit.
Secondly, we don't have universal health care. You could end up with thousands in just ambulance expenses if you are out of network. If I am not imminently dying (how can I judge that?), we are driving ourselves.
Thirdly, this likely makes cars more expensive. See first point. We can't do that without decent public transit coverage.
Yes, we have a lot of people die on the roads in the US. No, the solution isn't as easy as adding a kill switch.
Do they get a licence to drive while intoxicated? Or people with a history of driving while intoxicated are bared from general driving, but get a special licence so they can drive but only to work and to get groceries?
Drunk driving penalties in almost all states include a minimum six-month license suspension. However, if that were universal it would completely destroy lives and have massive downstream effects. The Occupational License is an (on paper) license solely limited to driving between specifically classified types of places - work, church, healthcare, basic shopping, school, some stuff for your children, etc. Not only is it not a license to drive drunk, many of them have the added condition that the vehicle needs an "ignition interlock" device (paid for by the driver) that requires a breath sample before the car will move. Many of them also have functionality where you need to periodically blow into it while driving before the device shuts the engine down.
Of course enforcement here is an issue. Many people drive with completely suspended/revoked licenses, no insurance, etc and get away with it everyday. However, many police departments deploy either stationary ALPRs (automatic license plate readers) or have them installed on police vehicles. They're creepy but amazing - I was on a "ride along" with the police once and we'd be driving down the road at 45 mph. It would sound an alarm and have a synthesized voice that says something like "Florida license XYZ - suspended". The cop would just turn the car around and pull the person over.
And this would stop them from driving drunk. How is that bad? Or are you suggesting they should be able to drive drunk as it's the only way they can get to work?
Unexpected road debris? A car flipping in front of them?
I can understand the others on your list as they are things that can follow you, but I'm having a hard time seeing how unexpected road debris or a car flipping in front of me would be problems. I might have to drive erratically for a moment to evade them, but then even if the system decided I was impaired and made the car stop I'd be past the danger.
No, it could not. These rare edge cases have nothing on the number of lives taken by reckless drivers.
Just because something is hard to measure, doesn't mean it's not significant.
No estimates for the "lives saved while driving pregnant wife to hospital drunk and speeding" will ever get close to those numbers.
This algorithm is going to have speed,acceleration, traction, steering vs direction as some of the inputs. A good rainstorm or snowstorm is going to tough to differentiate from drunk or high driving. Those aren't edge cases. And how long then will the car decide you need a time out? 5 mins? 1 hiur? 4 hours? There is no way this doesn't get pushed back from a 2026 implementation anyway. You can't just drop this in when those model year cars are almost fully designed by now
Also it's perfectly possible to drive safely in severe weather. You shouldn't be swerving or driving erratically in bad weather either. If sight is limited, you're supposed to use hazard lights or (if it's due to severe fog) fog lights to alert other traffic to your presence and drive very carefully and slowly. If the road is extremely slippery you should use season-appropriate tires or snow chains if appropriate and otherwise drive carefully and slowly.
Those are very different patterns of behavior from the dangerous and reckless driving the law is clearly concerning. The pot head carefully going 20 because it feels like going 60 is clearly not the target for this. The drunk swerving into oncoming traffic because the alcohol is elevating their confidence while tanking their reaction time and fine motor skills very much is.
For the average medical emergency, everyone would probably be better off with the car stopping by the roadside: heart attack, stroke, confusion, … are not improved by hitting other cars, buildings, pedestrians.
> How many people rushing to the hospital with a pregnant wife in the back will no longer make it before giving birth?
I would say if this is anything more than a movie trope it would be solved better by fixing your medical system, and not having to drive dangerously and illegally in the first place. Planted into a tree is not a great way to give birth.
Why are you assuming the person with the problem is driving? That’s not what anyone is talking about. The point was that someone driving a passenger to the hospital would be in a justifiable rush.
> I would say if this is anything more than a movie trope it would be solved better by fixing your medical system, and not having to drive dangerously and illegally in the first place. Planted into a tree is not a great way to give birth.
It’s not a movie trope, rushing sick people to the hospital is a real thing that happens.
It’s not a problem with the medical system. It takes longer for an ambulance to drive all the way to your location first and then to drive to the hospital than it would for someone to put you in their car and leave for the hospital immediately in most cases.
You’re taking the most bad-faith interpretations of what people are suggesting, but you’re really just setting up straw man arguments and missing the point.
Because it's what the average "medical emergency" involving "driving as though impaired" is.
> That’s not what anyone is talking about. The point was that someone driving a passenger to the hospital would be in a justifiable rush.
No, the point was "medical emergency", and "driving as though impaired".
> It’s not a movie trope, rushing sick people to the hospital is a real thing that happens.
It absolutely is a movie trope, having to endanger everyone because you need to drive like a maniac due to a medical emergency is a rounding error occurrence in the real world.
> It’s not a problem with the medical system.
Of course it is, the fact that you entertain is as a genuine possibility very much speaks to a lack of pregnancy care and access to emergency services and medical care.
> You’re taking the most bad-faith interpretations of what people are suggesting, but you’re really just setting up straw man arguments and missing the point.
Medical emergencies at the wheel are anything but a strawman, it's a daily occurrence in the US.
Even more so in the context of "driving as though they are impaired".
If we're talking strawman, that is absolutely what "rushing to the hospital with a pregnant wife who otherwise won't make it" is, it's a nonsense movie scenario entirely made up to pull on heartstrings.
Much like CSAM, this is one where there not clear daylight between the advertised situation and other similar situations (why would you want to stop pedos but leave mass shooters able to communicate?) other than the targeted class being particularly villainized by society at large. People should really have the faith of their convictions and discuss this as a generalized thing, “what is the benefit of having killswitches in all our cars for impaired drivers” and not just pretend that it’s only alcoholics who are dangerous on the road. This will eventually be coming for anyone who displays dangerous driving even if it’s “medical” and should really be viewed in that context.
I’m not saying that’s entirely a bad thing either. Maybe we’d all be safer if our cars spied on us 24/7. But people are generally repulsed at that idea because I’m not a filthy drunk driver, how dare you treat me like one. It was never about road safety at all, it was about getting one up on the underclass who we’ve socially determined it’s ok to scorn and hate.
If you think that’s not the case, contrast our social attitudes towards using a cellphone, which is equally dangerous to other drivers, and equally willful, and is so broadly accepted that people get upset about new laws to stop it. Clearly with some of these medical issues, it’s not because of the harm per se but because of the social villianization - it’s okay to hate drunk drivers or fat people, and we don’t have that radicalization 24/7 against these other (equally if not more dangerous) behaviors.
https://journalistsresource.org/economics/cell-phones-and-dr...
Also, reminder that alcoholism is a medical problem too, not sure how that take gets started in the first place. But overweight and alcoholism are definitely villianized because of the perception that it’s “your fault” whereas not getting enough sleep last night is not your fault at all! It’s quite difficult to talk about some of these topics for a lot of people because “drunk driving bad”… but in a harms sense it’s no more harmful than grandpa getting behind the wheel and crossing the centerline because he’s 75 and not a good driver anymore. And both individuals do consciously make that choice.
And if grandpa or a narcoleptic have a right to drive to work because that’s what our society requires of them… so does the alcoholic. It’s weird to give people a “drive while impaired” pass when the idea is supposedly about harm reduction - again, you’re just as dead if grandpa crosses the centerline as if a drunk driver did it.
I assume you are unfamiliar with rural living, a common shortsightedness I see on this forum.
A women having early contractions, most likely would not qualify even for emergency lights.
This is the core problem: If we assume that the drunk driving protection is 100% accurate and there are never any false positives under any conditions, the bill seems more reasonable.
But I’m struggling to understand why people on HN of all places are assuming this drunk driving protection will be absolutely perfect and never trigger unless absolutely justified. Anyone who works with technology doing fuzzy classification or detection tasks knows how impossible it is to get the accuracy being implied in this thread.
What would be the problem with that? If you don't make it to the hospital before giving birth, you don't need to go to the hospital at all. The reason you might want to be in a hospital while in labor is in case something goes wrong that prevents you from successfully giving birth.