US infrastructure bill includes law that aims to end drunk driving | Hacker News Reader

US infrastructure bill includes law that aims to end drunk driving

morningbrew.com

The way to stop drunk driving is to make driving OPTIONAL. Without adequate pedestrian and cycling facilities, people are forced to use public transit and cars to get to bars and restaurants. Make public transit intermittent, unreliable and dirty then stop service well before bars let out? Now there is ONLY cars as an option. Ride share has helped but it is much more expensive and is almost as much as the bar tab.

Now they want to put stupid devices in people's cars that will randomly strand them in the middle of who-knows-where because they "Look Drunk."

To add insult to injury, sometime establishments tow cars left overnight. That happened to me. I took an Uber home, left the car in the bar's parking lot, and in the morning, the car was gone.

The way to stop drunk driving is for local prosecutors to indict drunk drivers in accidents for attempted homicide, and for local juries to then convict. Word will get around fast.

I'm always suspicious of any solution that involves expanding police powers and fines. This creates a conflict of interest where police and cities oppose anything that stops the stream of DUI fines and impound revenue. In addition it grants powers to the police that can be abused to stop and harass the innocent. Austin Texas alone is raking in over 60 million in fines each year.

https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/86R/fiscalnotes/pdf/HB0204...

Humans are social creatures, this will change nothing, there's plenty of full jail's in the US to demonstrate stricter laws don't necessarily work.

Wow the group supporting them is "Mothers Against Drunk Driving".

This is literally, "We need to put cameras and microphones into everyone's car and constantly monitor everyone all the time.... to protect the children of course".

Drunken-Driving Warning Systems Would Be Required for New Cars Under U.S. Bill (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/10/us/drunk-driving-system-m...)

27 points | bonyt | 21 hours ago | 84 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29188260

Congress' new mandate to carmakers: Figure out a way to stop drunk driving (https://www.npr.org/2021/11/09/1053847935/congress-cars-drun...)

37 points | healsdata | 1 day ago | 81 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29183613

> Congress' new mandate to carmakers: Figure out a way to stop drunk driving

Except that it was the other way. Lobby. ( of course i don't have links. I still need my job)

Another reason for the price of new cars to have to be increased by the manufacturer

But cheaper overall if it works well. Insurance costs, etc. go down, not to mention the lives saved.

Lives may be saved but insurrance never goes down.

Car insurance is one of the most competitive industries in America.

I'd say more expensive overall, since more people will try to drive places, and thus need cars and wider roads, etc

An infrastructure bill that has rider clauses in it that have nothing to do with infrastructure? Color me shocked! Why a bill that's worth 1 trillion dollars is allowed to even be signed in the first place should be abhorrent to anybody. With that amount of money involved, you're just ASKING for political bribing, back-door deals, etc. etc.

If you want infrastructure done properly, let the states handle it themselves - worry about interstate highways and commerce. The past two years of courier companies using highways/roads exclusively for delivery should be taxed to high heaven, but notice how that's not happening?

I can't wait for companies to implement more features in vehicles that will be done under the guise of "safety" but in reality will be used for oppression of rights and freedoms. What's that? Your breathalyzer in your car isn't working? Too bad, you can't drive, and now you have to pay to have it repaired on your dime! Notice how they're slowly making individual car ownership more and more expensive and harder to reach?

Don't worry though, we'll all be "safe"!

Breathalyzers have to calibrated on a regular basis in order to function properly. These are devices that will essentially brick cars if there are false readings. I don't think the lawmakers have thought this through.

It seems that both the government and corporations agree that everything you own should spy on you constantly.

Agreed. Not sure why folks aren’t immediately coming to this conclusion.

Really interesting bill, I know there was a push some years ago to do something like it. Not sure how it's infrastructure but drunk driving does kill thousands every year (I think it also skews heavily younger) in the States alone so this is definitely interesting. I wonder if all cars will essentially come with distracted driving cameras that double as doing this function since it's mandated now and there's no downside in using the interior camera for multiple functions.

The drunk driving lobby is massive and will try to destroy this aspect of the bill

Is this the first legally mandated user-hostile feature? Will it be the last?

No and no. The car industry has learned that they can increase profits by making legislators mandate things in the name of safety and security. See tire pressure monitoring for example.

> See tire pressure monitoring for example.

I am not sure I understand what you are saying. I appreciate knowing when my tire pressure is low.

I don't appreciate being forced to pay for a feature I don't need. The modern car is FULL of such features, and it's caused the price to skyrocket. The median price for a new car in 1968, adjusted for inflation, was roughly $25,000. Pre-Covid, the median price was something like $36,000. All while wages stagnate or fall accounting for inflation. Stop driving up the price with all this stupid unnecessary crap!

This seems to be in the same category as seatbelts

Can a seatbelt strand you on the side of the road in the middle of the night? Can a seatbelt turn off your car in the winter? Can a seatbelt collect private data from you? Can a seatbelt record everything you do?

Can a seatbelt hug? Can a seatbelt love? Can a seatbelt … feel?

Carefull what you wish. A seatbelt maybe not yet but a seat for sure.

not to worry i will fart the free will out of that chair

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/automatic-seat-belt-terrible-id...

Automatic seatbelts we’re tried. Was a horrible idea. I still have bad memories of those things as a kid.

IIRC it was a cheaper option of supplemental restraint system that the driver didn't control as a phase in period before airbags became the only acceptable SRS.

Seatbelts don't make judgements about my cognitive ability or sample and record health data.

Seatbelts don't stop the car from working.

I suppose as long as the built in breathalyser merely makes a loud beeping noise the whole time you're driving if your over the limit, this would be fine.

What feature is that, exactly?

Is it user hostile to prevent the user from killing someone? I've seen a kid sentenced to jail for DUI driving and killing people. I doubt the car was acting in his best interest when it let him do that.

Is it user hostile to prevent the user from speeding? From parking in front of a fire hydrant? From driving to an illegal gathering? All of those can result in jail and death (including the last one, as those protest epidemic studies can attest to).

How about driving without a license, or past curfew?

Any action contrary to the user's wishes is user hostile. You are welcome to give inanimate objects (and those who control them) power over you, but don't drag the rest of us into your utopia of begging our cars and appliances for permission.

Ah but I'm committing the slippery slope fallacy. I'm sure that unlike all the other surveillance state creep, this particular genie, once out of the bottle, won't spread.

If you define anything against the user's wishes as user hostile I don't know why you are using that term. If you had said "I don't like this technology because it operates against the drunk driver's wishes and technology should not do that." then at least your position would be clear.

If you need a poorly defined buzzword like "user hostile" to make your objection sound more convincing, maybe it wasn't so great.

I just looked up the definition of user hostile and it doesn't seem to matcb your usage, either.

> Is it user hostile to prevent the user from killing someone?

yes

I imagine the moment these start being implemented there will be a bunch of how-to guides on the internet for ripping out the sensors and rewiring the connectors to perpetually give a "sober" reading.

This will absolutely sprout a new cottage industry. I knew a guy who happened to be a mechanic and knew exactly how to bypass his court-mandated breathalyzer. He was very, very mad when the state upgraded their equipment to a version he couldn't easily get around.

I'd expect that doing so would result in a serious upgrade to the charges if one is later arrested for drunk driving in that car, leading to a great increase in the probability of significant jail time.

Seems like the easy solution there is to not drive drunk.

The best way to stop drunk driving is to subsidize autonomous driving tech.

Hmmm...yeah...no.

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