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Comment by joenot443 | Hacker News Reader

> It's totally plausible to me that this kind of nudge will save a lot of lives.

I think an in-car breathalyzer which gates the ignition would also save a lot of lives.

Most people agree that kind of manufactured paternalism is an overreach and would be against its introduction. Other people say the same about the diverted driving detector, and I imagine others said the same about the seatbelt sensor.

The intersection of personal freedom and personal safety is an interesting topic, I don't think there's a right answer and it's ultimately pretty subjective.

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> I think an in-car breathalyzer which gates the ignition would also save a lot of lives.

> Most people agree that kind of manufactured paternalism is an overreach and would be against its introduction.

Congress already passed a law in 2021 to start the process of requiring alcohol impairment detection in new cars around 2030 - the HALT Drunk Driving Act. It had broad, bipartisan support. I would say "most people agree" does not appear to be the case.

I have a hard time believing that the public at large is gonna be okay with having to blow into a hose anytime they turn on their cars.

No need. There are now sensors which can passively detect the presence of alcohol on anyone's breath within the cabin, and sensors which can detect BAC when you put your finger on them.

    if alcohol_detected_in_cabin:
        promptDriverForFingerprint()

The same cameras used to monitor if the driver is falling asleep can also check for cheating.

That's nice. You can pay for it. I won't be.

I hardly drive anymore since COVID, I'll gain the benefit of being less likely to be killed on my bike and not have to pay a dime :)

The law only specifies the outcome (alcohol detection) not the implementation (hose blowing)

Maybe transdermal alcohol monitor could be put on the wheel

I didn’t realize this!

I’d love to see an opinion poll on the topic, I imagine people’s opinions are going to change depending on the implementation.

If the pitch is “you won’t even notice it unless you’re drunk” then I’d imagine you’re right, and maybe people are more receptive than I thought.

It only sounds like overreach because we have become numb to an incredible amount of killing from distracted drivers.

What we've become numb to is the massive amount of overreach that has already happened.

Did a quick research and saw that in 2024 there were around 12k deaths in which one or more drunk drivers were involved. Doesn’t seem like much for a country with around 350 million people. In comparison, drug causes 7x those deaths. Cancer and heart diseases even more.

I feel like we have the technology to prevent a car from starting if the driver is significantly impared, but "solving" addiction, cancer, and heart disease are much harder problems.

Obviously it would need to be implemented carefully, but I personally would be more than fine blowing into a tube to start my car if it meant saving 12k lives a year with a very low false positive rate.

That being said I know it would never be implemented in a sane way in the US, and you would probably have situations like your car insurance automatically increasing due to a faulty sensor, so I'm ultimately against it unless a lot of other stuff changes.

But it's still much more possible than "preventing drug addiction"

> Obviously it would need to be implemented carefully, but I personally would be more than fine blowing into a tube to start my car if it meant saving 12k lives a year with a very low false positive rate.

I can already see two issues with these devices:

- They can’t reliably identify the actual driver. Criminals might simply ask someone else to blow into the device.

- With every car equipped with this safety feature, people might assume everyone driving isn’t drunk.

I’m not sure. It seems like this will only add extra hassle for law-abiding citizens while those for whom it was designed will likely find workarounds.

i think of those 12k only a tiny minority would go that far. like at the point you are involving other people, why not just ask them to drive you home? like yea people will always find workarounds, but a solution doesnt have to be perfect to be effective.

Every car safety post on HN has "guy who thinks 12k deaths is maybe not too bad." Thanks, guy! You really put things in perspective there.

Guy probably doesn't personally know any of those 12k...

I was simply suggesting that perhaps this level of overreach isn’t justified. Of course, any road death is regrettable.

Most every road death is the outcome of a poor decision made by a human. It's too much responsibility for many people, given the propensity to make choices that increase the chance of death and serious injury to others.

12k is obviously a large number of preventable deaths, especially, and it's a huge difference with diseases, when you consider that some of those deaths are people getting killed by drunk drivers. I don't think there is any acceptable number of people that did absolutely nothing wrong getting killed by a drunk or inattentive driver.

If you simply lock everyone up for their whole lives, you can prevent all kinds of deadly accidents. Eventually, somebody will argue that we are all morally obliged to accept being locked up for this reason.

I'm sure if you were one of those 12k your loved ones wouldn't be saying "what's 12k in a country of 350m?".

That's already a huge number. But it's ignoring the much larger issue of distracted drivers, usually on their phone.

Cancer & heart disease you're counting basically all natural causes.

> incredible amount of killing from distracted drivers

> 1.10 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/trumps-transpor...

For reference, fatalities on bikes:

> 9.32 fatalities per 100 million cyclist miles (6 deaths per 100M kilometers)

https://www.calbike.org/urban-transportation-research-bike-f...

The first link is a propaganda website so not really much use, and for the second one, pretty much all fatalities on bikes are the result of being killed by distracted drivers.

>The US has eight times as many pedestrian deaths per mile as Germany.

Clearly the US is unusually bad for distracted driving.

The stats come from the government agency in the US which tracks driver fatalities.

Here's the source document: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

Regarding "distracted driving" causing cyclist fatalities, my point was more that bicyclists have a higher risk rate. If we're already going down this path for safety, banning bicycling would have a higher impact than reducing fatalities ~10% which is what the EU claimed it could prevent.

Regarding the claim that "pretty much all fatalities on bikes are the result of being killed by drivers", that's simply not true. It also largely depends on laws and location.

https://www.bikeattorney.com/bike-accident-common-causes.htm...

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/05/20/1364622...

I would argue that any U.S. government data is pro-car propaganda.

For exemple, pedestrian killed by motorist are too often not counted as a motorist issue, but a pedestrian at the wrong place issue.

I think the average size of US vehicles has something to do with it. Being hit by a distracted driver in a Fiat Cinquecento is probably way more survivable than being hit by an F250 Super Duty twatwagon.

Personal freedom to drive a two tonne battering ram at deadly speeds where others are walking, biking, etc should be heavily regulated.

There is no limit to how much paternalism most people will accept. Therefore, we're bound to lose all of our personal freedom eventually, "for your protection."

I think I'd consider this kind of technology at the intersection of personal freedom and _public_ safety. Drunk or distracted driving puts others at risk, not just you.

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