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Comment by rubicon33 | Hacker News Reader

Another bright light on the horizon: Self driving cars. I'm hugely optimistic that within the next 100 years, we could very possibly see deaths from drunk driving shrink to a small fraction of it's current value. It's a great thing when profit driven businesses also have positive side effects for everyone.

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I'm curious when self-driving cars become common place how the law will react to it. It's my assumption that the law will still require a driver to be sober in the event that manual control is needed, though I suppose if the car is driving itself perfectly fine police would have no reasonable grounds to pull anyone over and discover they're drunk in the first place.

> though I suppose if the car is driving itself perfectly fine police would have no reasonable grounds to pull anyone over and discover they're drunk in the first place.

I can't speak for America, but here (Australia) I'd guess the vast majority of drunk driving tickets are from booze busses. I can't even remember the last time I saw somebody pulled over and breathalysed.

Could you elaborate? What's a booze bus? In the US, It's a pretty common occurrence to see someone pulled over and breathalyzed if they're driving erratically.

A booze bus is a random breath test - the police have labelled busses that they park on the road. I believe if you blow over the limit then you get on the bus and are tested again in 30 minutes.

They look like this: http://www.ranted.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/109890-b...

This may be the case in Melbourne - in Sydney cops aggressively breath test anyone who looks "suspect" (eg. P plates, any visible modifications, male w/ long hair, athletic wear) or who is "the right person at the right time" (say, if you're driving a utility around 4-5pm - many tradeworkers have a beer or two after work before going home).

Very soon. Some countries, such as Germany, already discussed rules around self driving cars. In countries with a strong car lobby it won't take long until laws are in place that provide self driving cars without human interaction (once this is safely possible). Otherwise it's not much of a selling argument.

Insurances are also very active developing models around it, so it shouldn't take too long from when we first see that car manufacturers can actually demonstrate the capabilities.

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