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Comment by a2tech | Hacker News Reader

'Safety' is going to be the thing that kills personal liberty in this country.

Don’t know why you put safety in quotes. You’re implying that this won’t make streets safer, by reducing drunk driving. But reducing drunk driving would in fact make streets safer.

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'm not aware of any technology reliable, trustworthy, affordable, and quick enough to accomplish said goal without regularly inconveniencing a significantly larger portion of drivers who may need their vehicles in other emergencies. If you could provide a mechanism that didn't infringe non-drunk drivers rights I'd be more apt to accept this idea.

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...

An override mechanism seems reasonable to me.

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.

That sounds awful.

Why? This fixes the problem of "what do I do if I can't start my car in an emergency?"

...until you get pulled over

> Cops who see the light can consider it "reasonable suspicion" to pull you over.

In what kind of emergency would this pose a problem?

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.

I don't think you gave this any serious thought. There are a lot of situations

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

So I'm expected to waive my Fourth Amendment rights because it's an emergency? Maybe you trust cops to not be power-tripping assholes, but I sure as hell don't.

Many states have quite low legal limits and it's broadly acknowledged that being tired, distracted, angry, stressed, etc. is almost or as bad as driving over the legal limit. https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/advice/best-cars-blog/20... In California it's .08. If for example I was at a party and a friend had some kind of medical emergency I feel it would be reasonable to take them to an ER despite being at .08 or .10 while being very cautious (assuming others were also not sober).

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.

FYI, the way it works in most states is that 0.08 is the "per se" limit. this means that having a BAC >= 0.08 is enough for a conviction. it does not mean you're guaranteed to be fine if your BAC is below that. if you get pulled over for any reason with a BAC >= 0.04, there is a good chance that you get arrested and face charges anyway. it's just a bit more work for the prosecution.

During the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, tens of thousands of people escaped by driving through the fire. Statistically some of them were probably over the limit. And the police were most likely too busy at the time to override lots of alcohol detection systems.

And how reliable are the Alcohol Detection Systems in a smoky environment?

We could eliminate food inspection and driver's licenses. That would increase liberty, but I don't think most people would find the freedom worthy of the cost.

Is anyone suggesting that?

Some libertarians are -- but I think they were trying to employ the slippery slope argument

The slope we’ve slid down so far has been very slippery indeed.

No, but I think GP’s point is that there will always be a tradeoff between personal liberty and safety. We can argue about where the line should be, but it needs to be drawn somewhere between the two extremes.

But GP's OP is not saying there shouldn't be a line, rather that it is that line that will likely be crossed in guise of public safety to unburden us from the burden of having liberties.

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.

Oh such a classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZITP93pqtdQ

Both you and the GP are suggesting slippery slopes. I think it’s reasonable to think that checking every single driver, every single time they drive, for alcohol use is an invasion of privacy, especially since the vast, vast majority of drivers are not driving drunk. That also doesn’t mean privacy is dead or that it’s time to end food inspection.

What do driver's licenses add to safety? The only people they prevent from driving are someone who is crazy enough to drive a car without knowing how, but draws the line at driving without government approval.

If you had to do continuing education to renew your license every X years then it may add to safety. But as it exists today it seems to be more of a form of ID than anything to do with a vehicle. When someone gets hired at a new job (USA) a drivers license can be used as a part to show citizenship, which has nothing to do with driving.

People who want to drive and don't have licenses (whether by their choice or not) are currently driving on the roads right now. Also some of the worst drivers I've ever seen all do have their driver's license.

While what you're saying does seem to make sense, sometimes the situation isn't always that simple.

Big Sister is always much, much worse than Big Brother, and he's bad.

Can you define "personal liberty", in the context of living in a society?

Ah yes, that old personal liberty of driving drunk. Who will save us from this nanny state.

"trusted computing"

Would you be okay with a drunk driver killing one of your family members? What if that could be prevented with tech like this? Does your personal liberty outweigh the need to keep people safe from tons of metal hurtling at them at insane speeds?

> Does your personal liberty outweigh the need to keep people safe from tons of metal hurtling at them at insane speeds?

I don't see why not, as the US was founded on the principle behind this.

By your rationale why don’t you give up cars? If you care for your loved ones so much, Han them from using cars.

Does your personal liberty outweigh the need to keep your family safe from tons of metal hurtling at them at insane speeds?

Because in this country the options are

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.

> 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.

>Buy a car because it’s required in order to literally feed yourself

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-...

I usually WFH, but that's about the distance to my job if I take the highway, where bikes aren't allowed. If I were to go using side streets it would easily be double that.

Wouldn't be looking forward to a 50 mile ebike commute!

Truly what a self-indulgent, privileged comment from someone who evidently doesn't share the lives, practical needs or economic circumstances of millions of people who truly, really, fucking absolutely need cars for their daily living needs. Oh hey.. Let's flippantly recommend an "ebike"... Because of course that's the perfect solution for all the ranchers, farmers, far-suburban residents and millions of people who live in neighborhoods and cities where public transit and bikes are absurdly impractical for the jobs they need to do each day to pay the bills.

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.

Let us ignore the huge cost saving brought on by truck-trailers.

We cannot imagine a fleet of electric bike pulling one truck-trailer, in the spirit of slaves pulling blocks toward an Egyptian pyramid.

Come on, even the Amish drive cars.

Freedom is the notion that it is more important to protect the innocent than to punish the guilty. The burden of proof falls to those who would abrogate our liberty, to show beyond a shadow of doubt that their measures will be effective and worthwhile. The standard of evidence must be higher than "I think it'll work!" Prove that it will really prevent those deaths before you get a second word.

Many americans would rather that whole swaths of the population, including their own family members, die painfully then wear a mask in a grocery store.

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