Drunk-driver detectors for cars mandated in infrastructure bill
autoblog.com
autoblog.com
Even if the false positive rate of such a system was only 0.1% per driving session, an extraordinarily ambitious goal for any AI system, that still translates to an incredible number of false positives across all drivers. Someone who drives twice a day for work would be expected to hit a false positive every couple of years or so. Do we really want our cars randomly flagging everyone as drunk every once in a while?
Obviously the people writing this bill assumed that perfectly correct AI could exist. They did their job, now the problem is punted to the engineers.
Ridiculous. I’m sure this will get removed eventually, perhaps with further legislation.
MADD is notorious for demanding government overreach in reducing or eliminating alcohol consumption altogether. They have a history of ignoring any possible negative consequences of their proposals for other people, and this is a good example.
> Among the systems that have been studied are ones that monitor a driver for signs of distracted, impaired or fatigued driving. One uses sensors that scan drivers’ eyes for signs that are similar to ones that police officers look for when they suspect impairment during traffic stops.
Even breathalyzers aren’t as fool-proof as they sound. Apparently eating certain meals right before using a breathalyzer can trigger false positives. Even breathalyzers have not insignificant numbers of false positives they would become a huge problem if forced upon the entire driving population.
So even with breathalyzers, it’s still about magical thinking about technology’s ability to monitor people’s behavior.
Do you think the goal is worth pursuing? Imagine we could achieve zero false positives, would you be in favor of it then? Would it depend on what the system does with a positive detection? If we could have perfect detection of drink driving, should we? Or, said another way, should it be anyone’s right to choose whether they drive drunk?
It’s worth remembering that it was argued that mandatory seatbelts were also terrible overreach, as well as other mandatory safety measures like airbags, child seats, mandatory motorcycle helmets, etc, despite the fact that the safety results are unequivocally positive. It seems like in the US we tend to have a problem with things that are mandatory, regardless of the benefits or outcomes.
However the current systems we have imply that I'd have to blow into something every time to start my car, that straw thing would get full of saliva, and on top of that there could be false positives so it's obviously a big no.
ok, but if it's mandated that means you'll do without a car
I don't think I will have to worry about it though because if such legislation ever passed, it wouldn't be long before someone got stranded in the middle of nowhere and died next to a perfectly functional car that refused to start up, the media would make a big deal about it, and the legislation would be reverted.
I assume you mean mandatory breathalyzers as car equipment, alongside high-visibility vest, documents etc. It is law in some countries - I know of France. I judge it one of the most absurd conceivable piece of legislation.
You cannot go to people who are possibly abstinents and suggest that they may drink: it is offensive. Even if well below the median, even if only the third, tenth standard deviation refrained from intoxication, you still cannot go to some random individual and assume they drink - in their culture, that could be a disrespectful to defamatory act.
Plus, it is a matter of prudence: also on a matter of proper relation, you do not want to put those people in the condition of discussing why they find it offensive - forcing them to possibly offend the inquirer.
AI is fun until you start applying it to real world issues, then it crumbles apart.
doesn't mean a good team of serious guys could make a useful device (I'm no proponent of it btw)
Honda Insights have a "gas cap sensor" that lights the "check engine" light when the gas cap isn't tight enough. "to prevent VOC emissions in California" I'm told. But after nearly 20 years, the sensor isn't reliable anymore, and is hard to find and expensive, so the practical thing is to dike it out.
I've no idea how the "drunk driver" detection is supposed to work; but how is it going to be any more reliable or less troublesome than the gas cap sensor?
Does anyone even in the offices of anyone voting for this crap have the slightest idea what technology they're mandating or how reliable it is? Is there any understanding or concern for people with "auto brewery syndrome" or any of the other edge cases that will trip some folks up?
Or is this purely kabuki "see us care" and damn the cost?
I love these kind of laws, oh we mildly inconvenienced a car company, big deal, they'll end up making more money off it in the end. Hopefully I'll just stop seeing the bodies of people being decapitated or torn in half on my commute to DC and actually be able to actually go where I want on time.
As we add more safety features, the marginal cost per life saved is going up. We got a big bang for the seat belt. But backup cameras cost around $5.7 million dollars in cost for every one life saved.
I commend NHTSA for their hard work, but I can't help but feel government safety mandates in cars are now scraping the bottom of the barrel in cost-effective life saving measures.
If I had to offer an alternative, SAMHSA, the government org focused on substance abuse seems to be under-funded and highlights numerous ways additional dollars can save lives.
So rather than scrape the bottom of barrel on making cars safer, perhaps we can instead spend that money on substance abuse interventions with youth and college age students that lead to alcoholism, binge drinking, and drunk driving. Maybe we would get more bang for our buck.
Unless this part of the bill isn't actually about saving lives, but then I'd have to ask why a Representative from Michigan would have an incentive to make cars more expensive other can wanting to save lives.
FWIW, I've heard anecdotally that the insurance companies pushed for backup cameras more than anyone else, but given the benefits to lower insurance (arguable, but in theory), less deaths and less injuries, it seems like a win. The technology will also get cheaper over the years.
[1] https://www.theregreview.org/2012/05/30/30-rowell-camera/
[2] https://safetyresourcesblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/vehi...
[3] https://kelleyuustal.com/rear-view-cameras-reduce-90-of-back...
Backup cameras have value for the consumer in preventing accidents and damage, the government didn't need to mandate their inclusions on cars as consumers voluntarily were willing to add this feature for years.
However, when the government forced all consumers on all to have to add this feature that is where the line was crossed.
I drive a fuel efficient Chevy Spark, it cost me maybe $11000 brand new. I drive an average of 5000 miles a year. When I have to replace the car, it will cost a lot more because now it will have cameras and drunk driving gadgets, etc. I dont even have an automatic transmission or power locks - these features are a waste of money for me, but the government is forcing me to purchase safety features and the economic value to society is spurious. I'd rather there be a sticker where my rear view camera is saying 'in lieu of camera we made a $2000 gift to clean water in Africa, it saved more lives, trust us'
Wait, so do you mean you don’t care about the extra cost at all, and you don’t care if Chevrolet charged you a lot more than the cost of a backup cam in order to donate? It’s just the government safety rule you object to?
Or are you saying you think backup cameras cost $2000?
And why didn’t you acknowledge the valid point that the economic value to society of backup cameras is in reduction in accidents, and not limited to loss of life situations?
Are you being honest with a dollars per life calculation? It seems misleading. What about the property damage value, how much is that? What about injuries?
According to the stats I found with a quick search that were used to justify the backup cam rules, there were 15,000 injuries per year in addition to the ~200 deaths. And one third of all backup related deaths are children under 5. What is the economic value of a child, and are you sure it’s less than 5.7 million?
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2014/04/07/2014-07...
This is also from 2014, which means the net cost/vehicle has probably come down a fair bit (camera modules are <$5 and most cars including entry-level are shipping with screens already).
Helsinki and Oslo have got to zero road deaths.
Now, it may not be possible to hit zero, but it's the only number worth aiming for (aim high or you won't know how far you can go).
Clearly, something is being done correctly everywhere else.
>So rather than scrape the bottom of barrel on making cars safer, perhaps we can instead spend that money on substance abuse interventions with youth and college age students that lead to alcoholism, binge drinking, and drunk driving. Maybe we would get more bang for our buck.
Keep in mind though, it isn't tax money that's going to fund this, it's consumers, who will pay in the form of increased car prices. This means disenfranchising poorer people from being able to afford to own cars and/or reducing other features, such as increased passenger safety and fuel efficiency.
Isn’t this a misleading framing? It suggests that safety isn’t improving, but the population has increased, as have speed limits and road miles traveled. The per-capita death rates have been falling consistently for decades. See the first graph at the top of this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...
Where does that figure come from?
Car sellers don't sell OEM cameras at cost. They have a ridiculous markup (between 5x & 10x and yes that includes certification & testing). Your $500 dollar reverse cam is cost at ~$50.
By mandating them, the 'luxury!' margin will magically disappear.
Surely if they wanted to target alcohol specifically they would just mandate breathalyser to start the engine, which is already a thing in many countries for people previously convicted of DUI
Around here the fee for talking with a handheld phone is more than twice what a headset costs + points off your license. Yet people still do it all the time.
According to random internet search [2], the saturation flow of a lane of traffic is about 1900 vehicles per hour. Let's assume a 4 lane highway at rush hour is about 80% of saturation, which yields 6,000 vehicles per hour.
Assume 50% are offending, and you can positively catch/convict 10% of those, so 300 vehicles x $175 = $262,500 in fines per hour. At 10% finder's fee, you could make $2,625 PER HOUR just sitting by the side of the road with a camera. Not bad!
1: https://www.drivinglaws.org/sb1613.php
2: http://www.mikeontraffic.com/numbers-every-traffic-engineer-...
The phone companies, insurance companies, car companies, and individuals have no incentive to disable phones while driving. Who is left to fix this problem?
Maybe it will get fixed when a senator's family member is killed by someone driving and using their phone.
This kind of administrative rulemaking is required to go through multiple rounds of public notice and comment. The EFF & related orgs should be intervening and lobbying at every stage in this three-year long process.
The problem at the moment is that the person in charge of one of the two equally sized factions in power has zero interest in doing any kind of leadership or legislating. That's why nothing is happening.
...which is a lot less of a problem if the House and the Presidency represent the majority. Then the Senate functions as intended: a check on the "mob" of democracy.
But now we're in a position where most states are gerrymandered, the Electoral College also heavily favors the rural minority, and the judiciary has been intentionally hijacked by abusing the rural bias.
It makes sense if you think about it. Given hundreds of years to figure it out, eventually a minority interest is going to find a way to engineer the federal system to seize (and retain) power against the will of the majority.
You can argue if this is good or not for the country, but the argument definitely is that it allows a representative more tools/leverage for his constituency, and that it allows for more effective compromises.
Any attempt to reversing this trend requires dealing with that line of argument.
“Fallacy” is not “you are not allowed to”, only “it is a source of error to”.
Point out that something characterized in the former manner is, in fact, the latter is not “a nitpick”.
>Infrastructure bill could enable government to track drivers’ travel data
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684
(Warning, it takes a minute or so for Chrome to render the HTML "text" tab. PDF link: https://www.congress.gov/117/bills/hr3684/BILLS-117hr3684pcs...)
The scope creep seems insane.
I think its 24220 in the senate version? I dunno.. I don't fully get the system.
Keyword to search for is "passively".
And before someone accuses me of "not wanting to stop drunk driving", of course I do. The way to do that is to address the underlying causes of alcoholism, not patching the symptoms.
It may be time for something different. Maybe just stop a car cold that's behaving erratically. Nobody has the right to endanger strangers on the highway, for any reason.
The right bill will be important. But its not idiotic, to try to save lives with technology. Nor is it far away from a workable solution.
But the technology to feasibly and reliably do that does not exist.
Your car stopping you from drink driving will false positive too much or just break. Drinkers will just buy older cars anyway. Let’s keep cars simple!
People should not have contact with police when they are presumed innocent.
The balance is saving lives vs. individual freedom. As a European I probably have a less pure view about freedoms than people in the US.