Anti-Drunk Driving Tech – Our Ticket to Safer Roads
Drunken driving is a menace that can’t be solved, or at least it seems that way. It’s quite destructive for the people who drive inebriated and for other people who share the road with them.
For years, agencies and parties from different backgrounds such as law, technology have been in active pursuit of eradicating this threat. The government beefed up impaired-driving laws and made room for stricter enforcements to be handed down to habitual offenders.
Private companies in car tech, also, committed to working towards their vision of producing highly intelligent systems that could effectively curb drunk drivers from getting on the road, and as a result reduce the number of fatal road crashes involving alcohol.
And yet, the situation has not changed much. Here’s a shocking stat about impaired driving for you. About one third of the automobile related deaths on our roads are still caused by drinking and driving.
DUI cases on the rise
In spite of the strong measures taken so far, the number of DUI cases are steadily increasing. A closer look at the current situation shifts our focus to sobriety tests, particularly how effective they are at warding off the threat posed by drunkards.
Sadly, standard field sobriety tests have been of little help to remove these serious drunkards off the roads. Tests like walk-and-turn, the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus (HGN test) etc are fairly subjective and there’s much to debate on their merit and accuracy and about the manner in which they’re given. Stories of wrongful detainment and malicious prosecution keep coming out every now and then, with the common thread being that the police officers quickly give in to their suspicions without exercising good judgement. Are you on the receiving end of a false DUI charge from bogus sobriety tests? Get in touch with the most experienced and reputable DUI Lawyer and seek guidance on how you can defend yourself against the false charges framed on you.
Anti-Drunk Driving Tech to the Rescue
Self-driving cars are no longer just a mere prototype. Several tech giants have successfully completed a test run of their own working models, and even though there are a few kinks to iron out, it won’t be long before the first driverless car sees the light of the day.
It’s time we looked up to advanced car tech to eliminate the threat of DUI completely. And things are humming in the space of car safety tech, as well, as expected. Several small firms are working on coming up with advanced car safety tech that could potentially stave off a DUI mishap by accurately detecting the level of alcohol in the driver’s system. On the surface, they might seem to be a little different and possess their own distinct mechanisms but deep down they’re pretty much one and the same: an alcohol detection system designed to deliver highly accurate results.
Promising Use Cases
Rapid development in impaired driving safety equipment has led to development of alcohol sensors that can detect with high accuracy if the person behind the wheel is drunk and potentially disable the vehicle from starting. These devices have their own working mechanisms and offer a pretty accurate picture of the level of inebriation, a big improvement from a few years ago when they were in their nascent stages and needed a lot of refinement before they could be market ready. But they are ready now.
Here is a brief overview of the functionality of some systems which are currently making waves in the market.
- A built-in breathalyzer, attached to the steering column, which uses remote sensors to pick up the concentration of ethanol content in the breath of the driver. The advanced tech differs from standard breathalyzers in that the device itself is not noticeable and the remote sensors pick up the breath sample discreetly even without the driver knowing so there’s no way the driver can tamper with the test to get a favourable outcome.
- And for someone having a pretty bad history of driving under influence, an intelligent device that tests for traces of Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) and interlocks the ignition in the vehicle. For those who don’t know, many provinces in Canada such as Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec have put in place programs requiring interlock devices to be installed in the vehicles of problematic drunks convicted of DUI previously.
A mere shadow of what they were a few years ago, these systems are quickly evolving. Designers are also exploring how they could get different systems to work in tandem so we can determine with higher accuracy if the driver’s blood is completely devoid of alcohol.
Of course, these systems are not entirely fail-safe. Enterprising drunks, who are a little creative, can still find a way around these systems. A drunk driver can get their sober friend to blow into the device in his stead, for instance. Nevertheless, it’s a start to try and stop a drunk from potentially causing serious trouble or damage. Certainly, there are gaps to plug but it’s the first step in the right direction. In the grand scheme of things, it’s just one step on a very long journey but a definitive one. More companies are actively pursuing development of alcohol detection systems that can work individually or in tandem to keep drunks from driving, and that means new cars with built-in anti-drunk driving tech functionality will soon start rolling off the assembly lines. And that will make our roads a lot safer than they are right now.
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