Hoping to make drunk driving a literal impossibility, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rolled out a prototype drunkenness-detection system for cars that would disallow vehicle operation if the driver is above the legal limit. Working with auto-industry members, NHTSA has been working on DADSS—Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety—and presented its ideas for stopping drunk-driving accidents before they happen before Congress and Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
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Drunk driving is of course dangerous, illegal, and just plain stupid. Helpfully, then, NHTSA is working to make its in-car drunk-detection tech as seamless and unobtrusive as possible. Currently, DADSS has come up with two solutions (see them in action at the bottom of this page), one being touch-based, while the other is breath-based. Neither involves any uncomfortable—or possibly exciting—probing, blood samples, or the like, and both take less than a second. The touch detector centers around the steering wheel and uses an infrared scanner to analyze the topmost layer of the driver’s skin, reporting the chemical concentration of alcohol back to the car. If they’re above the legal 0.8 percent blood-alcohol level, the car won’t start.
-The breath-based system is more hands-off, as an ultra-sensitive breathalyzer analyzes the driver’s BAC without requiring a deep inhale, exhale blow into a tube. Instead, the system simply analyzes the driver’s natural breath in much the same way as the touch-based system, using a beam of infrared light, the data from which is passed through a slightly different set of analysis protocols and can tell the car how much the driver’s had to drink. Both are clever solutions, and each one is being investigated by a Tier One automotive supplier, something NHTSA seems to think ensures potential market feasibility down the road.
-The breath-based DADSS device is being developed by Swedish supplier Autoliv, while the touch-based system is being developed by Takata. Yes, that Takata, the one being investigated by NHTSA and the supplier behind millions of ongoing vehicle recalls for exploding airbags. To be fair, exploding airbags are quite a bit different from drunk meters, which we’re pretty sure lack the capability to detonate or directly hurt people. If this technology proves reliable, and it can prevent judgment-challenged people from getting behind the wheel after a few too many, it doesn’t really matter who’s doing the work.
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In fact, what really matters is the timeline; easily integrated in-car alcohol-detection setups are at least five years away—the span of time NHTSA has outlined as the testing phase for DADSS systems—after which NHTSA wants to rush them to market. We can see a few potential drawbacks to the technology, namely the ease with which a false read may be possible, especially with the breath-based idea, and that there could be a legion of naysayers who believe it’s un-American to intrude on personal freedom regardless of consequences. (See: the repeal of motorcycle helmet laws in some states.) Many municipalities already require DUI offenders to incorporate a breathalyzer-ignition interlock into their vehicles, which indicates that the public is already retroactively wary of drunk drivers. But we also should be wary of them proactively, and to that end NHTSA’s DADSS project takes up a noble cause.
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from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/1KKtw2H
via Agya
