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Comment by josephcsible | Hacker News Reader

This is terrible. All such systems will have false positives. It's wrong to treat everyone as a criminal instead of reserving such systems for people who actually have been convicted of it.

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It also increases the cost of every new car. People complain about housing, and goods like cars being expensive. But many fail to realize that every do-good law has a cost.

"There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs."

Cities hate cars, and cities dominate the legislative process at the state and federal regulatory levels. Cars are a constant problem for cities, it makes sense that they'd rather spend their time and money on things other than fixing congestion and maintaining existing roads.

They can't attack cars directly, it would be political suicide, but they can boil the frog by making them increasingly expensive. That's what they're doing.

I wonder if this is being downvoted because it's

a) off topic b) low quality c) true

> It also increases the cost of every new car.

It can probably be pretty cheap, since it looks like it does not have to detect actual drunkenness. It just has to detect impaired driving. That might be mostly doable with hardware already being built into new cars.

I'm sympathetic to this point of view, but then we have to be consistent with it.

No TSA. No license plate scanners. No fare gates for trains. No locks on doors. No anti-shoplifting tags.

EDIT: Is there some Emerson convention in town? You can look at my comments for some of his other quotes (It's actually not very surprising to me that an Anglo abolitionist who also believed that Anglos were the 'best' race wasn't a big fan of consistency!)

The difference is that you own your car, but not those other things. Things you own should always do what you want, not try to enforce laws against you.

I was under the impression that 99.9% of people take their cars out on publicly owned roads when they drive. Am I mistaken?

But this would go in the cars, not in the roads, so that's irrelevant.

Well it wouldn't preclude your use of the car (you can still enter it and turn it on), you just can't drive it on public roads (Essentially the entire use-case of moving a vehicle).

TSA is at the airport lobby and technically only precludes me from entering the airside of an airport, but its purpose is to prevent me from getting on a plane with a gun.

I don't think point of implementation is a strong argument here.

Wouldn’t an closer equivalent be DUI checkpoints staffed by government-accountable law enforcement officers at the entrance to the road? Not an automaker forced to privately police you in your own vehicle

And the TSA rules apply to my suitcase, not to the plane. What's the difference?

Your suitcase isn't required to have a built-in X-ray machine.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds - Emerson

Consistency is not a primary value. It's important, but it shouldn't be the only driver to do something.

Right! Right! Also, we can't require railings on stairs or prohibit electrical wiring from being attached to doorknobs as a trick, or stop people from driving on sidewalks.

Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds and this commenter exhibits the smallest of them all.

We already have the third amendment.

> No TSA.

Yes.

> No license plate scanners.

Yes.

> No fare gates for trains.

Sure. A lot of places will do the fare check on the train.

> No locks on doors.

Well, no mandated locks. I hope I'm able to leave my front door unlocked if I choose. It's my door.

> No anti-shoplifting tags.

Ok. Again, I don't see why these should be required by law.

And mine:

> No compliance surveillance built into my possessions.

Yes.

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