Of course, being drunk could impair your judgement as to your ability to safely drive home. If this device was both accurate, and precise, it could stop you from making bad self assessments, or it could make self assessment easier in the future.
But, it’s not, so it’s probably unsafe to use.
Just quit playing the “How much can I drink and still drive?” game and take a cab. If you can refrain from trying to touch the driver’s wiener or barfing in the vehicle that is an added bonus, but all things considered I’d rather clean up your cookies and put up with an occasional groping than see you drink and drive.
I have trouble walking even when I’m sober. Makes interacting with the cops all the more interesting.
gaming the system is sometimes a bad thing.n
This review, of considerably more accurate devices explores the thorny question of “what good are these devices.”
Side note: Thea’s gin intake was calculated to raise her BAC above the limit, but not by a lot. Yet 20 minutes after she had stopped drinking, we measured a BAC of 0.18%—more than twice the legal limit. We waited another 20 minutes, a full 40 minutes from the time of her last drink, assuming the amount of alcohol in her system would decrease. Wrong. The second test showed her blood alcohol level to be 0.19%. According to information provided by B.R.A.D. (Be Responsible About Drinking) and a number of other sources, at that BAC, she should have been experiencing dysphoria, nausea, and giving the appearance of a sloppy drunk. But this wasn’t the case—she was alert, and walking and talking easily. Her behavior with such a high BAC shocked our police partners, and it goes to show what a huge impact an individual’s tolerance for alcohol can have.
Unfortunately, most of the cheapies are semiconductor gas sensors, which aren’t terribly picky or inclined to go into much detail. Cheap, and the decent ones can get reasonably accurate responses, so adequate for safety systems(unless there are silicones in the environment, those poison such sensors beautifully); but diagnostically useless.
Perhaps it is a mentality which came with spending so many years on standby, where induced intoxication would be criminally negligent, I just got used to not drinking expecting to be needed.
Alcohol is just part of the equation though, it is ability to perform safe work. Driving an automobile is a dangerous activity with a weapon-like machine in the same deadliness category as an assault rifle but far more likely to produce casualties on a day-to-day basis.
I suggest skimming this chapter from the FAA risk management handbook.
http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/risk_management_handbook/media/rmh_ch03.pdf
Drinking boosts people’s confidence. I asked a woman staggering to her car in a bar parking lot if she needed a cab. She said “Nrawh.” and got behind the wheel. I disagreed. I called the police with her license plate number.
What about skipping the sensor and designing a cellphone game that will measure your alertness and reaction times?
…but then the society would have to take their heads out of their collective arses and measure actual effects on people instead of chemicals in their bloodstream. The latter approach won’t catch subtler and often more dangerous things like fatigue anyway.
And the breathalyzer, if precise and accurate, could deflate the confidence, But oh, no, better to trust intoxicated judgement than to design a tool for the job.
The problem, of course, is that even the most precise and accurate tool can become imprecise and inaccurate unexpectedly (and without notice). Relying on said device to determine if you are ok to drive is, to put it mildly, not a smart thing to do.
Why is this a phone device? Numeric LCD displays cost pennies, and then they could have ditched the BT radio, the hassle of pairing, and the hassle of having an extra app on your phone that does practically nothing except take up memory.
Makes you wonder what kind of info the app is gathering, and what it does with that data. I just read this story, so maybe my paranoia sense is just tingly.
There is already a proven method of drinking nothing before driving.
The Absolutists. Gotta love them. Their approaches always work. Too bad they can not be always applied!
Aha… Secretly owned by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. People will start wondering why their rates went up so drastically even though they haven’t filed any claims yet.
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