Kill switch in 2026

[RDATLTE]

I reluctantly post this. I don't want to start anything, or have this go off the rails again, and don't want to start any political "conversation". I only do it as I believe this article has more updated info from the first time we "discussed" this.

Anti-Drunk Driving Tech Is Coming To Save 10,000 Lives Per Year

NHTSA is working to advance a federal mandate requiring new cars to use anti-drunk driving immobilizers

jalopnik.com

I'll go on record and say this is one of the most insane laws ever. I don't mean to make light of saving 10,000 lives. How about some kind of cell phone disabling tech? I'd think that would save a bunch of deaths and crashes too. Why don't we make the drunk driving laws tougher, though that won't stop people for driving drunk. If this really goes into effect, I'll be buying my LAST car ever just before every car has it....until the law gets repealed.

And lastly, I love this quote: "99.9 percent accuracy could result in over a million false positives every day". Great. Imagine calling your boss..."I'm going to be late (or not in) because my car thinks I'm drunk". So much for innocent until proven guilty.

Carry on

They said that Global B would never be broken...

 

[RDATLTE]

There are huge issues with this law and I agree 100% with your concerns. All car enthusiasts should be wary when there are laws like this one.

All free citizens should be wary when there are laws like this one. Then again, there are seat belt laws and helmet laws.

 

[RDATLTE]

Might be an urban legend, but believe certain mouthwashes can cause erroneously high readings if there's some residual alcohol in your mouth too.

Will definitely mess up some morning commutes, that's for sure.

They talked about sensors on the steering wheel as well. I wonder if alcohol based hand sanitizers would give a false positive as well?

 

[LF4472]

I reluctantly post this. I don't want to start anything, or have this go off the rails again, and don't want to start any political "conversation". I only do it as I believe this article has more updated info from the first time we "discussed" this.

Anti-Drunk Driving Tech Is Coming To Save 10,000 Lives Per Year

NHTSA is working to advance a federal mandate requiring new cars to use anti-drunk driving immobilizers

jalopnik.com

I'll go on record says this is one of the most insane laws ever. I don't mean to make light of saving 10,000 lives. How about some kind of cell phone disabling tech? I'd think that would save a bunch of deaths and crashes too. Why don't we make the drunk driving laws tougher, though that won't stop people for driving drunk. If this really goes into effect, I'll be buying my LAST car ever just before every car has it....until the law gets repealed.

And lastly, I love this quote: "99.9 percent accuracy could result in over a million false positives every day". Great. Imagine calling your boss..."I'm going to be late (or not in) because my car thinks I'm drunk". So much for innocent until proven guilty.

Carry on

The actual NHTSA release appears to address everything you mentioned.

The main purpose of that Jalopnik article was to generate web clicks from people outraged by something. It says NHTSA took a "big step" towards something but misrepesents what that step was. They make it sound like this tech is coming any day...

For the last two years the agency has been researching possible directions to take, and how the mandate will manifest. The administration has now released its summary of that research, and issued a call for public comment.

What NHTSA actually said is "we have all these questions about how this sensing could actually be done, please help"

In this notice, NHTSA presents its various activities related to preventing drunk and impaired driving and discusses the current state of advanced impaired driving technology. NHTSA also asks many questions to gather the information necessary to develop a notice of proposed rulemaking on advanced drunk and impaired driving technology.

Re: cell phones, distracted driving is referenced on page 18 as a focus area.

Re: false positives, that comment was from the NHTSA and was relating the point you raised, that a seemingly high accuracy rate is not good enough due to the sheer volume of interactions.

"We are trying to see can we get it done, does the technology exist in a way that is going to work every time," Acting NHTSA Administrator Ann Carlson said, adding that public acceptance of the technology would depend on its accuracy.

Carlson said there were close to 1 billion separate daily driving journeys in the United States.

"If it's 99.9% accurate, you could have a million false positives," Carlson said. "Those false positives could be somebody trying to get to the hospital for an emergency."

This week's action is basically the NHTSA officially opening the process to comments in order to identify if there is any technology that could achieve the result. So basically they are just in the research phase, they aren't anywhere near requiring any technology to be installed in new cars. Between here and there is a lot of time and lobbyist money from the auto makers, who I assume want nothing to do with this since they (going back to the false positive challenges) would have to support it.

 

[LF4472]

P.S. They also are taking into account impact of not only false positives, but true positives where locking the car might be a worse thing.

4.3 NHTSA seeks comment on any adverse consequences of an impaired driver being unable to drive his/her vehicle. For example, this could result in an alcohol-impaired person being stranded late at night for hours and susceptible to being a victim of crime or environmental conditions (e.g., weather). Or an alcohol-impaired camper may need to use his/her vehicle
to escape from a rapidly approaching wildfire or environmental conditions (weather). How often would such incidences expect to occur (assuming full fleet implementation)? Are there logical strategies for mitigating the negative effects? What if the vehicle owner wishes to drive their vehicle on private land (i.e., not on public roads)?

 

[Finally-a-V]

@LF4472 ....your last post alone (4.3) should make our friends in Congress not do this. Imagine people dying because they can't get away from a fire or freeze to death.

 

[bloominguez]

I reluctantly post this. I don't want to start anything, or have this go off the rails again, and don't want to start any political "conversation". I only do it as I believe this article has more updated info from the first time we "discussed" this.

Anti-Drunk Driving Tech Is Coming To Save 10,000 Lives Per Year

NHTSA is working to advance a federal mandate requiring new cars to use anti-drunk driving immobilizers

jalopnik.com

I'll go on record and say this is one of the most insane laws ever. I don't mean to make light of saving 10,000 lives. How about some kind of cell phone disabling tech? I'd think that would save a bunch of deaths and crashes too. Why don't we make the drunk driving laws tougher, though that won't stop people for driving drunk. If this really goes into effect, I'll be buying my LAST car ever just before every car has it....until the law gets repealed.

And lastly, I love this quote: "99.9 percent accuracy could result in over a million false positives every day". Great. Imagine calling your boss..."I'm going to be late (or not in) because my car thinks I'm drunk". So much for innocent until proven guilty.

Carry on

From the article:

Americans, by and large, support the idea of reducing drunk driving as much as possible.

In my personal experience, this is far from the truth. There's a big difference in what people say when surveyed and who they vote for.

I've posted this before, but I just can't stop myself...
Scenario: Police department tries to crack down on drunk driving. Sit a block away from a local bar, pull over people observed staggering out of the bar and/or driving erratically after leaving the bar. Lots of drunk driving arrests. Success!? Word gets out, fewer people go to that bar (or other bars in that city). Bar and restaurant owners complain to mayor and city council, city council realizes that businesses will be hurt, city will collect fewer tax dollars, and--most importantly--the council members will face tough reelection campaigns and may be voted out! As a result, the mayor tells the police chief to knock it off. Drunk driving continues.

There are very direct ways to reduce drunk driving, without violating civil liberties or adding costs to vehicles. We, as a country, are not willing to do them.

 

[RDATLTE]

From the article:

In my personal experience, this is far from the truth. There's a big difference in what people say when surveyed and who they vote for.

I've posted this before, but I just can't stop myself...
Scenario: Police department tries to crack down on drunk driving. Sit a block away from a local bar, pull over people observed staggering out of the bar and/or driving erratically after leaving the bar. Lots of drunk driving arrests. Success!? Word gets out, fewer people don't go to that bar (or other bars in that city). Bar and restaurant owners complain to mayor and city council, city council realizes that businesses will be hurt, city will collect fewer tax dollars, and--most importantly--the council members will face tough reelection campaigns and may be voted out! As a result, the mayor tells the police chief to knock it off. Drunk driving continues.

There are very direct ways to reduce drunk driving, without violating civil liberties or adding costs to vehicles. We, as a country, are not willing to do them.

If they actually observe staggering and or driving erratically as opposed to just targeting anyone coming from such an establishment.

 

[Finally-a-V]

"Americans, by and large, support the idea of reducing drunk driving as much as possible".

I'm sure we do, but not with this. And who did they "poll"?

 

[LF4472]

@LF4472 ....your last post alone (4.3) should make our friends in Congress not do this. Imagine people dying because they can't get away from a fire or freeze to death.

As someone personally impacted by drunk driving, I'm all for things that can reduce it, but yeah, I'm in the same spot as you on the risk of unintended consequences and all. Part of their research seems to be do you even completely lock down the car or leave it in a limited mode (e.g. limit the speed).

My guess is they would start by expanding the self driving tech to distracted driving (e.g. how SuperCruise will disengage if it detects the driver is not paying attention) through some passive mechanism (e.g. seat belt chime).

 

[1Evil55]

Yay for more oversight. We can't be left alone anymore...

 

[Dirkbg]

I'm all for eliminating drunk driving. As a retired highway design and safety engineer I've seen many examples of what drunk drivers can do. I'm sure we all have. But, I'm skeptical that they can develop a technology that will be invisible to the non-drunk driver with a 99.9%+ accuracy rate. The news is at least reporting NHTSA wants the as yet unknown technology installed in vehicles by 2026, and that sounds crazy they can have something worked out by then. To me, the ideal situation is the one that prevents the impaired driver from driving in the first place, versus what I just saw on TV that it detects how the driver is driving. What does the car do, call 911? Tell the driver to pull over in 1 minute before it stalls? Pull over and wait for law enforcement to arrest you? I turned off lane keeping in both my vehicles that have it, not due to me not staying in the lane, but false alarms from ghost lines and avoiding debris in the roadway. It would be nice to have more details what this will do to vehicles before adopting something just to say they did something about it.

 

[LF4472]

I'm all for eliminating drunk driving. As a retired highway design and safety engineer I've seen many examples of what drunk drivers can do. I'm sure we all have. But, I'm skeptical that they can develop a technology that will be invisible to the non-drunk driver with a 99.9%+ accuracy rate. The news is at least reporting NHTSA wants the as yet unknown technology installed in vehicles by 2026, and that sounds crazy they can have something worked out by then. To me, the ideal situation is the one that prevents the impaired driver from driving in the first place, versus what I just saw on TV that it detects how the driver is driving. What does the car do, call 911? Tell the driver to pull over in 1 minute before it stalls? Pull over and wait for law enforcement to arrest you? I turned off lane keeping in both my vehicles that have it, not due to me not staying in the lane, but false alarms from ghost lines and avoiding debris in the roadway. It would be nice to have more details what this will do to vehicles before adopting something just to say they did something about it.

The law also has provisions allowing NHTSA the ability to extend the timeline as well as reporting to Congress why such a system cannot be deployed by the timelines given.

 

[jbawden]

Politics 101: create a law that puts the financial burden on the consumer, the technological development on the private sector, and then the "government" takes all the credit. It's still the least worst system going, but people need to apply some critical thinking skills before making choices at the ballot.

 

[Neveready]

This law is a joke and Its unrealistic to expect this to work properly given the current technology and the manufacturing recalls such as airbags, faulty turn signal stalks, backup cameras, autopilot, brakes...this is all recent. Any LEOs on the forum chime in, but it's my understanding breathalyzed machines have to be calibrated frequently in order to work properly. If the technology was that simple and reliable, they would have already implemented that for the force years ago.

That being said, I have no idea how capturing air quality in a small cabin, when a designated driver is full of a bunch of drunk passengers there’s no way a system like that could be accurate or work properly. This is law is doomed. By the time this technology is accurate enough to work, cars will be fully autonomous, and it won’t even be relevant.

My question is, what other law is buried in this one.

 

[Ergoc5]

This is one of my biggest pet peeves, if you are not passing someone get the hell out of the lane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is always that one Richard Cranium!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In Texas its illegal to just travel in the left lane...

Oh well, I will shut up now...

It's this and very much this.....left lane is for passing only...

 

[rubberduck]

PSA: Don’t do drugs.

 

[Tall Steve]

I've always wondered why bars have parking lots?

I HATE the government and most police so I'm in a no win situation...

 

[Finally-a-V]

It's this and very much this.....left lane is for passing only...

Many states already have this law or something close. The problem is the assholes who won't get OUT of the left lane, and the LEO who won't enforce it.

Now I'll be quiet.

 

[Ergoc5]

Many states already have this law or something close. The problem is the assholes who won't get OUT of the left lane, and the LEO who won't enforce it.

Now I'll be quiet.

I think GA is levying fines for left lane hogs