NTSB Calls for Alcohol Detection Systems in All New Vehicles
ntsb.gov
ntsb.gov
True, but there were also 250 billion more miles traveled than 16 years ago and a population of roughly 40 million more people. So though the raw number is higher, the traffic fatalities per mile traveled and per capita is actually lower than it was back then.
Our goal should be to have zero deaths related to common car usage and driving. For example, the backup camera is there to help reduce the number of people backing up over their own kids. This is a good thing.
You can argue that this system may not be the correct implementation to reduce drunk driving. You can argue other things might actually be better. But don’t claim that personal liberty is at stake for people when 43,000 people lost their personal liberty when their lives ended. Why don’t you care about their personal liberty?
I'd also need to know an override mechanism exists because it seems like certain rare situations could arise where you need to operate a vehicle intoxicated, e.g. fleeing for your life in defense with a relatively low risk of injuring someone comparatively. I'm sitting at home sipping a scotch and hear an intruder come in who for some reason is an abusive person after me specifically in my life. I phone the police but also decide it's best if I can safely flee the area. Maybe the police could override it remotely, I don't know. Overall the edge cases seem difficult to deal with and infringe on others liberties. We start talking about the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few and trolly problems with different counts of people on different tracks.
I'm just throwing some hypothetical out, it may not be good, but my point is that rare situations can occur and because you were partaking in a legal activity like drinking, due to an emergency change in situation that wasn't predictable, you suddenly need to drive because the risk is now higher than drunk driving. Perhaps a tornado is approaching your house or abusive spouse is out to kill you...
How about: when you engage the override, a light on your car turns on, as a signal to everyone else on the road that you may be under the influence. Cops who see the light can consider it "reasonable suspicion" to pull you over.
> Cops who see the light can consider it "reasonable suspicion" to pull you over.
If you're fleeing a natural disaster, the cops will be fleeing too, so they aren't going to pull you over.
If you're fleeing someone who wants to kill you, you want to be pulled over so you can receive police protection.
https://www.nfl.com/news/officer-apologizes-after-delaying-t...
https://www.ems1.com/airway-management/articles/video-man-be...
I'm sure you could come up with many more possible scenarios
I know many people that live outside the US take a zero tolerance policy to drinking and driving in the sense that if you are going to drive you don't drink at all and I applaud that. I take the more practical approach of knowing how many drinks I can have at my body weight and can for example have a glass or 2 of wine during a 2 hour dinner but no more because my BAC with 2 drinks is under .08 and each hour 1 drink is metabolized.
I do fully acknowledge the more people drink the worse their judgement as to whether they are safe to drive so I expect many will get angry at me for the above. From what I recall most DUIs are for multiples of the legal limit but I can't find a source at the moment.
And how reliable are the Alcohol Detection Systems in a smoky environment?
Food, water, stuff like that have potential to kill off everyone. Drunk drivers on the other hand are not likely to ever pose an existential threat. So I tend to agree with those who insist that, of course there must be regulation, there must be informed discussion, no we shall not consult the i-ching, but definitely loss of liberties require an exceptionally high public good threshold to be considered.
tldr; to keep that line in an optimal space between the extremes, clearly two opposing forces are necessary.
While what you're saying does seem to make sense, sometimes the situation isn't always that simple.
Does your personal liberty outweigh the need to keep your family safe from tons of metal hurtling at them at insane speeds?
1. Buy a car because it’s required in order to literally feed yourself, or
2. Live in one of the highly desirable, expensive pre-war neighborhoods that remain walkable
Many Americans can’t just “give up cars” even if they wanted to. Car dependency is literally codified in out zoning and street building (MUTCD)
Maybe if car dependency wasn’t such a requirement in order to live, maybe if everyone could easily walk to the bar, we wouldn’t need alcohol detection in cars.
This is the goal that is worth spending political action on, not snake oil remedies designed only to advance the careers of politicians peddling them.
One doesn't eat a car, nor need a car. It sure is nice to have but other options exists for most trips. An electric bicycle makes it easy to go anywhere needed. Even a non electric bicycle can go a great distance.
On the other hand I just looked up the average commute to work distance and it is way higher than I would have though, 27.6miles [1] Still a long distance but not too long for an ebike.
[1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-way-...
Wouldn't be looking forward to a 50 mile ebike commute!
Truly, some of the people on HN are incredible at taking their own little bubbles of life and just cluelessly extrapolating them outward to any situation without a single pause. It's laughable.
We cannot imagine a fleet of electric bike pulling one truck-trailer, in the spirit of slaves pulling blocks toward an Egyptian pyramid.
I don't see why not, as the US was founded on the principle behind this.
OK, but it's the greatest number of fatalities per mile traveled in 14 years, and the highest number per capita in 13 years, though.
The recent trend upwards is pretty alarming and it's not worth pretending otherwise, even if you're dead set against this solution. Both statistics are up over 20% from the lows of a decade ago, 30% in absolute numbers.
Personally I'm pretty convinced by the case of rising phone use and vehicle size in the same period and would like to see those addressed.
In my country, the most drivers caught under the influence this year were using drugs rather than booze. Alcohol testers do not detect drugs. Also good luck driving a car with such a device to flee a fire or having the kid eat oranges while you're driving.
13 or 14 vs 16 years isn't all that different, and most people understand absolute numbers better, so if you have to use one it seems like a good choice and isn't misleading with statistics, as the OP implies.
The republicans are right when they say most transit funding is just throwing good money after bad. Most transit projects spend far too much on making things look nice and often have been given bad routes that will never result in anything useful.
The first paragraph is useful for every country. The second is obviously US specific.
> The passage defining what Congress actually wants describes a system that can "passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired; and... prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected." This is only half of the proposed system, though. The other half specifically references blood alcohol content, saying the technology must "passively and accurately detect whether the blood alcohol concentration of a driver of a motor vehicle is equal to or greater than the blood alcohol concentration described in section 163(a) of title 23, United States Code; and... prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if a blood alcohol concentration above the legal limit is detected."
The first half is impossible in a car that has assistance features. You can't use machine learning to figure out if a driver using lane-assistance and radar cruise control on a highway is drunk because they're hardly driving at all. There are no inputs to analyse.
The second half is literally impossible. You cannot passively detect a driver's blood alcohol. You can actively detect it by having interlocks in the car but they have to be calibrated regularly and it's not passive at all.
This is a Timmy Turner wish, not a law.
Hopefully that's what will happen here. The NTSB only recommends things to the NHTSA. So this proposal hasn't even gotten as far as the above example.
https://jalopnik.com/self-driving-car-tech-forgotten-by-auto...
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2017-01-12/pdf/2016-31059.p...
>Assuming a final rule is issued in 2019, this would mean that the phase-in period would begin in 2021, and all vehicles subject to that final rule would be required to comply in 2023.
See also, https://www.electronicdesign.com/blogs/contributed-blogs/arc... And here's is my 2017 post on alt.cyberpunk about the ruling and a link to an articles about it back then, https://groups.google.com/g/alt.cyberpunk/c/YpRasEtoOwA , https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/06/21/killing-car-privacy... and https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/danger-ahead-governmen...
I’m against a system that refuses to let me drive because it thinks I’m drunk. Or a system that would prevent me from breaking the speed limit, at my discretion, e.g. in an emergency.
Depending on the system's accuracy, this could be a fair compromise. Alternatively: a black box record in case something goes wrong. Less preventative. But deterring and reasonable.
I've been involved in an situation that resulted in a fatality and trying to rescue the victim and for an untrained responder your ability to think and process gets chopped down to around 25% of what it is normally. That is probably worse if the victim is someone you know. Now you want to argue that those people should be driving 100 mph through the streets blowing through red lights and whatever at their own discretion like that solves problems.
People need to call 911 and get the ambulance, which can stabilize the patient, to come to them. They can run code red and are trained in how to run red lights and get around traffic safely. They do it for a living and they're emotionally detached from the emergency.
Not to mention that the tires on the average vehicle shouldn't be driven that fast and they're probably nearly bald due to lack of maintenance.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-woman-str...
Your strawman is naked. You should dress him in some plausible deniability.
There's nothing in the comment you are replying to to suggest in the slightest way that he is in favor of those things. Just because he's against the flavor of Skynet(TM) you want doesn't mean he's in favor of whatever random "bad thing" you want to paint him as in favor of.
Can't wait until they install a printer so they can just print the tickets out right into my car.
I dislike cameras as it feels like you're constantly performing and if you slip up, you don't get to learn, instead your mistake is archived and put up for others to scrutinize.
I get that we, as humans, enjoy documenting our world, but the idea a spy which will no doubt store data that is accessible either remotely or locally with the right tool, is now and has become so pervasive will probably be considered one of the most grotesque things future societies will look back on and think we were insane for ever allowing. So much of our history is lost to the ages, and frankly, it's best it stays that way.
Tough on speeding restrictions are also stupid. The Italians and Portugese found better ways to deter speeding: red lights with speed sensors at the entrance of low speed zones, localities and cameras with license plate readers that measure your average speed. You either get a red light or a fine for generally speeding as opposed to speeding for five seconds to overtake a slow car.
Like "and they just started selling bullet proof backpacks instead of adapting the Holy Documents by the Founding Fathers (pbuh)?"
Here [1] is a video Utopia that describes our potential future.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJYaXy5mmA8 [video]
There's a solid connection between DUI enforcement and reduction in deaths. We've all heard of crashes involving someone with multiple DUI arrests. These offenders need identifying, help, supervision, and maybe removing their driving privileges.
Perhaps then mandate that cars be compatible with some standard for such systems to try to bring the cost of them down - the actual alcohol sensor is mere cents, but integrating it into todays cars aftermarket is often very costly.
I’ve seen people do interesting things to avoid getting interlocks installed. In that state if you owned a business an interlock must be installed in all company vehicles. People will sign over vehicles to family members. Some buy a beater car to have the interlock installed on and only start the car a couple times a month to log the minimum amount of starts required for compliance which is checked monthly for an additional fee.
Oh and by the way the interlock calibration installation / removal / calibration business is privately owned and only open Monday through Friday 9-11am 2-4pm by appointment only.
Actually not driving would show your claims (under penalty of perjury) to be lies. Courts do not like that at all.
As you said, the sentence is suspended - because the person agrees to the option of staying out of jail with conditions which the person agrees to comply with. If the person doesn't want that option then they do the jail time.
From what I have seen (obviously laws vary by location) it’s jail time (typically 365 days suspended) AND interlock. Not a choice between the two.
I guess you are free to not drive in a month, but then the tester will need to stay attached to your car longer till you have demonstrated you are rehabilitated.
Here in Germany, in almost all urban and urban-surrounding places you're not stuck to expensive taxis to get home after a bar night, you simply hop into a bus. In rural areas, the situation looks different, and correspondingly the DUI rates are higher there.
They should charge people with attempted homicide with a deadly weapon while under the influence.
Like the side object detection and backup cameras, mandatory electronics are great for component manufacturers. For consumers it increases initial costs and reduces resale value after some years due to difficulty of affordably fixing old electronics. Much of this is financial punishment on the poor and working class.
That said, I once read that the most important enforcement factors, with regard to actually reducing DUIs, were 1) increasing the likelihood of being caught and 2) minimizing the time between being caught and experiencing consequences. Notably, severity of punishment wasn't a significant factor. I know that states will differ in enforcement approaches, but the US states I've lived in haven't seemed at all interested in adopting a data-driven perspective - what I've seen has been a very low likelihood of DUI detection coupled with prosecution that can take a year or more for a routine DUI (let's not forget needlessly harsh punishments that are more likely to destroy one's family or finances than decrease the likelihood of future DUI...).
The contentious nature of this topic seems to make it hard to find rational discussions online. I've found plenty of emotional anecdotes, but few evidence-based suggestions mentioned (aside from the obvious but unrealistic suggestion to make cars unnecessary...). I'm no expert, but the "traditional American" perspective - 'Drunk drivers are horrible people who will go to hell when they die. Let's just charge all of them with attempted murder and lock them up for good. [commented on reddit via phone app from driver's seat of car in left lane on I-95]' (my characterization) - seems completely useless, in terms of actual harm-reduction.
What does seem clear is that drunk driving is caused by poor judgment and/or inadequate risk-assessment (its correlation with # miles driven could be a third factor worth mentioning). If we observe the two largest demographic groups among drunk drivers, young men and chronic alcoholics, it's clear that they share these characteristics - young men because their frontal cortex hasn't matured enough to reliably assess risk in general and chronic alcoholics because their constant drinking necessarily impedes good decision-making. If we're not developing solutions that target those particular deficiencies (i.e. not a small chance at having a harsh, but essentially abstract punishment a year or more in the future), I don't think we'll see real progress on this front.
In any case, I certainly don't think bringing enhanced surveillance into privately-owned vehicles is the solution.
instead a Gov agency says that we all now need to jump through a hoop because of drunk drivers.
Great. Just great.
Also, smaller streets will typically lead to less distracted drivers, because it requires a certain level of concentration to navigate these streets.
Oh, and something about enormous SUV's that won't make traffic any safer...
You don’t need alcohol detection in cars if everyone can just walk or bus safely to their neighborhood bar or friends. Virtually nobody wants to drive drunk, but it’s basically encouraged by the way we design our cities.
As you say, the roads in Europe are much different. The speed limits are MUCH lower and the roads are designed such that you really can't go much faster. If we invested in safer roads and public transportation a lot of our problems with cars would solve themselves.
Or maybe we should just test for HCG along with alcohol and report HCG drops to the govt.
You mean OnStar or Ford Sync?
Theme music: "Red Barchetta" by Rush
However, the obvious solution is to make it so people DON'T NEED A CAR TO DO EVERYTHING! Public transportation, cycling infra, pedestrian friendly design! All of these reduce drunk driving.
I wonder if we'd see speed limits increase if everyone followed them as-posted? Because right now there seems to be this assumption from both sides that everyone is speeding, so they post 70 because they want 80, or 25 because they want 30, etc.
While DUI is a legitimate problem, it isn't clear to me though what exactly the NTSB is proposing here? They have those "breathe into" systems (interlocks), but they have hygiene and maintenance limitations. Unclear how driver monitoring systems can determine if someone is DUI (in particular when you look at edge cases, like disabled drivers that move atypically while still be authorized to drive).
PS - I suspect, but cannot show data, that existing upcoming safety technology may decrease DUI caused fatalities in particular "driverless" automations like lane centering, automatic lane-changes, and autonomous navigation. While I don't consider this technology mature, it may still be safer than an inebriated driver.
While current self-driving technology is obviously unsafe when given total control, I think it could be turned into an extraordinarily effective safety system: program it to only take accident avoidance measures and low-level corrections like lane centering, and crank up the thresholds so it only gets invoked in clearly dangerous scenarios.
I also suspect many people favor letting some legally over the limit people drive, at least short distances, in certain emergency situations, like transporting relatives who can’t walk away from a fire. Exactly what those situations are seems like a subject of contention.
There’s also the related interesting case of moving vehicles on private property. For instance, a couple has a few cocktails at home, their car is towards the bottom of a sloped driveway under a tree, and there’s an unexpected flash flood or high wind warning. Should the car prevent them from driving it forward a few feet to safety?
I think that is a pretty good solution. In any emergency/ edge case / false positive scenario, you are still able operate your car. But a "pull me over" light goes on so that cops will know to double check in "regular" scenarios.
If there were speed limiters, it would probably be reasonable to increase highway speeds in places where they are excessively low, but to also enforce the current speed limits on residential streets as hard limits or even lower them.
This would massively increase safety while eliminating any concern about speeding tickets at normal highway speeds that people actually drive at.
That's not the entire truth. They want speed limiters that _can be disabled_, in the same way as the Auto Off emissions control feature. And, right now, the discussion is leaning towards first employing mandatory speeding chimes - and doing away with speed limiting functionality altogether.
https://www.dadss.org/touch-technology
They also appear to have other approaches as well, but this one seems like it would be almost transparent to the operation of the car.
Honestly I have zero objection to something that worked in this fashion - I suspect it would save a ton of lives. I think the knee jerk reaction that it's somehow a big brother kind of thing is a bit disingenuous, like saying "The government shouldn't interfere with my ability to drive drunk and potentially hurt people". I think this is much more akin to when wearing seat belts became the law - people moaned and complained but at the end of the day it's better for both themselves and others in the vehicle.
The speeding thing is completely unrelated and really shouldn't be mixed into this - how about solving one problem at a time well, instead of lumping a bunch together and solving none. I've had friends badly injured by drunk drivers, and in all the cases the drunk driver wasn't exceeding the posted speed limit. In one they just smashed into a parked car and hit them on the sidewalk, in one they swerved into oncoming traffic and collided head on, and the last drove into a store at full speed. Thankfully these were three different people I know, and not one incredibly unlucky person. ;)
Yeah, "speed limits" are primarily a political game, not anything based in reality. Roads designed for 55 get labeled 45 (in 1990) then 40 (2000) then 35 (2010) and then "road dieted" to 25 (2020). Everyone's "speeding" on paper, but not in reality -- they're going the speed they're were always supposed to go. But politically, people just decided slower=nicer for their particular stretch of street (they already live there, so 'walkability' is just fine for them, strip out all the lanes, throw garbage into the street, whatever) without really caring about how badly it would impact public transportation for everyone in general. It's a textbook "tragedy of the commons" problem.
If you enforce this by vehicle, everyone's going to flip out (because the fake-posted-speed-limit is way below what any sensible person is actually safely driving) and you'll see a significant number of people instantly jailbreak their cars to fix it.
Some of those little farming towns are now rapidly frowning suburbs, teeming with housing tracts, and those fields are now shopping center upon shopping center.
This is utter absurd, it's definitely based in the reality of 1/2 m*v^2. Decreasing the speed decreases the kinetic energy of impacts, decreasing injuries and deaths. That's the reality.
The fact that American roads were designed as the beastly stroads and 6-lanes inner city avenues that are present all around doesn't mean their speed limits should follow that design, the speed limit should follow what utilisation occurs around the road.
You might be right that in some places speed limits can be a political stunt of sorts. Basic physics and the examples of multiple Western countries which achieved a less deadly traffic by implementing stricter speed limits (among other measures) should show you part of the reality you feel is lacking.
Look at Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and so on. USA's road fatalities per billion km-vehicle are on average double, you can do better and kill less people, in total amount of road fatalities the USA is only behind Brazil.
No road in a city centre should allow for faster than 40 km/h traffic around people. A road (non-motorway) with major separation between automobiles and people in a city shouldn't exceed 60 km/h. Traffic even flows better with larger windows for smart traffic control, lower the speed, lower the average travel time.
USA infatuation with left turns across roads posted at 45 mph or higher lead to deadly T-bone collisions. European roads often have roundabouts which naturally slow traffic and a collision would be a glancing side kiss. USA foot gun left turns kill people by design.
I don’t need or want life management built into my vehicle. I don’t want Minority Report inspired crime prevention. A government camera pointed directly at me isn’t even a 1984 metaphor anymore. The management class is literally saying that’s what they want to do - they don’t even pretend to hide it.
I can understand why this would be limited to alcohol (at least starting out) as alcohol leaves the body rapidly and the diminished capacity leaves with the alcohol. Eventually I would like to see this applied to a variety of intoxicants.
The idea of having to blow into a tube every time I start my car seems outrageous, of course, but so many deaths every year in the US are due to alcohol-impaired driving that I'd almost be willing to support it.
Of course, given that they're only calling for new cars to be so equipped, we'd be looking at a very long period of time in which people prone to driving under the influence would refuse to buy newer cars, justifying it by saying that the systems don't understand how their alcohol tolerance works.
Why is the default here to go the overcomplicated solution and reduce everyone's privacy by pointing cameras at them in their personal vehicles instead? This smacks of the same uninformed decision making that leads to some startup reinventing the bus as an idea for an app every other year.
Furthermore it continues to ignore any solution that hinges on addressing the real issue (alcohol abuse) and burdens the millions of Americans that don't even drink.
If we just put everyone in jail, there would be many fewer DUI deaths.
Yeah, it’d come at the cost of some liberty, but apparently that’s no big deal anymore.
16 year olds can openly buy beer in the supermarket and consume it on their way home from school.
Driving licenses start at age 18, but there's two years of special probation that punish DUIs more extensively (and have a significantly lower limit). Police enforcement of these driving rules at times when young people celebrate is high.
This also means they do not start binge-drinking AFTER they got their driving license, they know their limits by then.
Doesn't mean we don't have drunk drivers, but maybe less drunk ones. We've had around 13500 alcohol-induced accidents with human casualties (of 306000 altogether) in 2021, but only about 2600 deaths overall, so probably less than 300 alcohol-related deaths in traffic.
How exactly do we convince an entire country be more responsible with alcohol?
Here are more examples:
https://www.columbusdefensefirm.com/causes-false-positive-br...
https://www.palmpartners.com/auto-brewery-syndrome-body-prod...
It's interesting that those that are diagnosed don't have driving restrictions like people with epilepsy since they are actually intoxicated by it, but that might just be because it's so rare that most people don't know or refuse to believe it exists. They'll have it the worst if this actually gets mandated and deployed.
Imagine the compliance.
Suppose it decides you're intoxicated after you've hit highway speed?
Will it store its findings, to be retrieved later?
Like emergency braking that prevent a car crush a small fence on purpose to avoid a tanker full of gas, refuse to start when someone have to go to first aid very quickly etc.
When this will happen I home some judges decide to sentence not compensation but exemplar punishments to those who decide a procedure, an automatism is better than single human being and so must prevail on them.
Not differently from companies those call-centers are powerless because of some automated business software procedure designed by some "manager", but different for the impact on human life.
https://time.com/6086981/bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-brea...
Yes, alcohol is bad, but it’s still the car that’s dangerous, but these systems would only target a subset of drivers, and wouldn’t do anything to improve overall safety of cars.
https://www.columbusdefensefirm.com/causes-false-positive-br...
Additionally, unlike e-scooters and e-bikes, you need a license to ride them, further reducing the likelihood of incidents, and at least here in Europe you have two different license categories - higher powered motorcycles are only available at the age of 20 or later.
Limiting acceleration isn't a great solution, but your idea that accelerating cripples avoidance makes even less sense.
you're in the middle lane with cars to your left, right, and rear. the one on the left doesn't see you and starts merging into your lane. if you slam on the brakes, you wouldn't be legally at fault for whatever happens next, but it would probably be best to briskly accelerate.
You are not legally at fault for stopping to avoid an accident.
In your scenario, lets make one small change, instead of the car being behind you it is in front... does accelerating help?
this depends on the assumption that other drivers are aware of their surroundings and following you at a safe distance. unfortunately that's not usually the case on roads in my area. you could try that, or you could avoid the entire altercation by escaping to the open space ahead of you.
> In your scenario, lets make one small change, instead of the car being behind you it is in front... does accelerating help?
is this supposed to be some kind of gotcha? let me make my point more clear. your car has brakes, an accelerator, and a steering wheel. use whichever one of those takes you in the opposite direction of the impending collision and doesn't require other drivers to avoid you instead.
I've been driving for ~30 years and cant tell you when "accelerating" was my choice to avoid an accident.
I have had people attempt to change lanes without looking first. I honked and they stopped.
It is great to manufacture a situation where as you put it, people don't keep a safe distance yet the space in front of you is empty? Odd..
The more you post, the less sense you make. Perhaps read the response from the other guy as well?
It's the same thinking that people who carry guns around all day do. They think they're the protagonist in an action movie, that they can hero their way through any problem, and any limit to that is a violation of their rights.
Have a special more restrictive license for anything over 400kg and 40km/h and actually enforce existing dui laws by existing mechanisms rather than giving bars parking minimums.
(Additional information about the crash indicates that only 5 of the 8 passengers in the pickup were restrained)
So eight people were crammed into a pickup, 3 weren't wearing seatbelts.
What about freedoms? Unlike speech, you don't have a Constitutional right to drive drunk. I think even hard libertarians would balk at arguing "people should have the right to down 8 beers and then tear up 70mph on the highway". Because unlike freedom of expression drunk driving really does impact others, it's one of the leading causes of death and "I drive completely fine when drunk" is something nobody can say confidently.
What if the BAC fails when you're not drunk? After all BACs aren't 100% accurate. Now this really is a serious issue. But it's also something I really don't see happening. Because false positives in the BAC hurt sales, so auto manufacturers are going to skew towards false negatives. Capitalism is a really strong force, and capitalism says you don't want to prevent people from starting their car unless they are definitely drunk, because that generates bad coverage which ultimately hurts sales. Especially because the regulations are going in effect three years the earliest, so there's plenty of time to device better easier tests, so consumers aren't compelled to ditch your car for one with no BAC or a more reliable BAC.
Ok, but what if I'm drunk and there's a huge tornado or someone's chasing me and the only option is to drive recklessly? This is also an issue. But perhaps in that case there could be some emergency override which notifies law enforcement.
Ok, but what about speeding? The NTSB is not having vehicles check for speeding and they will not any time soon. Everyone speeds, on certain roads you actually put yourself in danger by driving under the speed limit, and speed limits are ultimately widely regarded as dumb. DUI laws are widely regarded as not dumb.
The bottom line is, unless there are really exceptional circumstances, you should not be driving drunk. And nobody is arguing that you should be allowed to drive drunk. So I think something which physically prevents you from driving drunk and breaking a near universally-accepted law, despite limiting your freedoms, is fine.
But this feels more like "design machine with appropriate safeguards so owner cant kill self/others" ... like SawStop or Bosch REAXX on circular saws or a Riving Knife on a table saw. Designing a tool/device/vehicle to avoid injury, especially when that injury can impact people around them is a good thing. Trains have devices to (attempt) to ensure the driver is paying attention to prevent accidents. With numbers like "over 10000 deaths due to drunk driving each year" and "over 100000 injuries related to drunk driving accidents each year" it starts to look like allowing people to operate these vehicles while under the influence is something the manufacturers should be preventing to avoid injury to the public.
Cameras aside, I don't see what 'personal liberty' you lose by not being able to drive while drinking. You don't have a right to drive, it's a privilege. If I can encourage technology and regulation to get people who unnecessarily put my life in danger off the roads, then I'm all for it.
Yes, all regulations are the same. Literally no difference between any of them.