Motor Trend reports on recent gov't. actions that will lead to drunk & drowsy driving detection built into new cars, https://www.motortrend.com/news/nhtsa-anti-drunk-driving-tech-rules-coming/
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has, after years of voicing its intent, officially submitted an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking surrounding anti-drunk-driving technology. This marks the first formal salvo in its bid to ensure every new vehicle sold in America comes with some form of built-in inebriation detection and possibly an interlock that prevents the car from being driven if the driver is determined to be impaired.
Alcohol-related vehicle crashes are among the leading cause of injury and death on America's roadways, which already have seen a precipitous backsliding in term of safety in recent years. After decades of progress reducing roadway deaths, America has seen car-related fatalities soar, leaving policymakers stumped and scrambling for solutions.
[...] Per NHTSA's notice: "This document initiates rulemaking that would gather the information necessary to develop performance requirements and require that new passenger motor vehicles be equipped with advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology through a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS)." The agency adds that:
"The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Bipartisan Infrastructure Law or BIL) directs NHTSA to issue a final rule establishing a Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) that requires new passenger vehicles to have 'advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology' by 2024. The BIL also provides that an FMVSS should be issued only if it meets the requirements of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act."
Most likely solution are cameras that watch the driver for warning signs, these already exist on some cars. It will be interesting to see if other solutions are also put forward.
MotorTrend then opines,
Of course, this opens many cans of worms. Will NHTSA advocate a warning system onboard that alerts the driver that they're impaired? An ignition interlock that prevents the car from starting and driving at all? What if there are false readings? A sober passenger taking whatever onboard test exists in the driver's place? One also could imagine the sort of arguments advocates of unfettered freedom might come up with: Someone eluding an attacker, but who had previously had a drink, being locked out of their means of escape due to technological misunderstanding. Of course, these concerns must be weighed against the more than 10,000 preventable deaths from drunk drivers annually.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by drussell on Sunday December 24, @02:24PM (7 children)
Perhaps they could instead start by banning things like attention-seeking "infotainment" touchscreens that control everything in the damn car, those god-awful newfangled "bright-as-the-resplendent-sun" high intensity headlights which intentionally blind all oncoming traffic, and features that pretend to be able to drive the car for you, etc. 🙄
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Sunday December 24, @02:31PM (2 children)
and tech to blank cellphone screens when crossing a street. It boggles my mind they want to make cars safer for pedestrians when 90% of the time the pedestrian is at fault.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday December 24, @05:49PM
You make a great point.
I love your sig as well. It really captures the mood of the moment, IMHO
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25, @02:44PM
You are driving a WEAPON. The highest-energy participant has the greatest responsibility in the situation. Drive like everyone else isn’t paying attention.
Does this make driving harder? Nope, this is how hard it’s always been. Your post indicates that only now you’ve figured out what you’ve been missing and you’re covering your embarrassment by blaming the victim.
Remember, driving is a choice and you have responsibility for making it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 24, @02:49PM
> those god-awful newfangled "bright-as-the-resplendent-sun" high intensity headlights which intentionally blind all oncoming traffic
I'm completely with you here, and I'm sure they are objectively worse for oncoming traffic than the old candles under glass. However, they have also dramatically surged in popularity simultaneously as my eyesight, particularly clear night vision, has gone to shit - so I'm not sure how much objectively worse they really are, and how much it's me progressing toward that age where my grandparents decided for themselves that they would no longer drive at night. My parents (now in their late 70s) still do drive at night, not sure how great of an idea that is, either.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Touché) by RS3 on Sunday December 24, @03:40PM
I wonder what the "impaired driving detection" systems will do when they detect that the driver can't see due to insanely bright oncoming headlights?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by phantomlord on Sunday December 24, @04:06PM (1 child)
I find the "safety" features in my car cause one to be reliant on the features rather than reality. Do you look in your side mirrors or do you look for the light indicating that there's a vehicle positioned in the lane next to you? When driving my older car without the features, I notice that I look for the dot first and the mirror itself is more of an afterthought. Do you look behind you when you're backing up or do you rely solely on the backup camera and listen for the cross traffic beeps? The number of times I've set my adaptive cruise control and later realized I'm going 10mph less than I should be because my car automatically adapted to the car in front of me without me realizing it so I could pass them. Meanwhile, I have red LEDs flashing and audio alerts going off because someone is taking too long to turn, but the driver nose deep in his phone with a green protected left isn't going because there's no alert for that.
It's not that I'm a bad driver, it's that the features make you complacent and dependent on the features. Meanwhile, the features are in place precisely because people DON'T pay attention to what is going on around them. Licenses are too easy to get and with smart phones and social media, people need their dopamine fix and distractions from mundane things like waiting for a light to turn green.
My car also has driver fatigue alerts. It's mostly done by the lane keeping systems seeing if you're swerving too much, using the lane markers as guides. Sure, a drunk driver can set it off... but you know what else does? Road construction. You can be following cones directing you instead of the painted strips and if the cones have you shifting between lanes too often, it'll set off the alert. If you're driving in areas where people are biking or people are walking along the side of the road, that too can set it off. So, what, my car is going to disable itself because of road conditions?
I recently drove with a friend that has an interlock after a DWI. She not only needed to blow into it to start the car, about every 10 minutes, she has to find the device, orient it to her mouth and blow into it several times, taking her eyes off the road to do so (or at least breaking her focus/concentration on driving). The device itself is as much a danger as driving drunk is.
There's also a reason why I specifically bought a car with buttons instead of a touch screen... I can literally feel my adjustments as I drive, rather than take my eyes off the road.
Now, on top of all of that, ever since the pandemic, nobody seems to care about people running red lights, speeding while weaving between lanes, etc. Between the bad driving, cars being too safe (not only the aforementioned features, but physical safety makes people complacent), the need for distractions, and the distractions provided by phones, it's no wonder that accident rates are up.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Spamalope on Monday December 25, @02:36AM
My first run in with automation:
The car insists I don't have my hand on the wheel, cuts off cruise etc because I'm smooth on the wheel and gently guide the car so that the tilt of the pavement does most of the steering on long highway drives. WTF, that's exactly when I want adaptive cruise.
Auto-steering:
The steering decided the break down lane white lines on the main lane + exit late were either side of the lane as I exited at night. (aka, thought left white line was right side of lane, and right side of exit was left side of lane) It jerked the wheel, steering into the barricade.
--
I can do without the automatic citation camera/congestion fee tracking system/rent seeking automation setup thank you. (Bets on how long this is used for auto-tickets; required for driving into 'congestion zones'?)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 24, @02:46PM (8 children)
No matter the system, it's not:
>What if there are false readings?
it's: what about when there are false readings.
I'm already leery of ECUs that are tied into vehicle immobilizer systems. Yes, we should have effective anti-theft systems. No, a fault in the anti-theft system should not require replacement of the entire wiring harness of the vehicle.
Fuel pump cut, yes. Starter relay cut, yes. Ignition system power cut, yes. Simple voltage signal into the ECU for authorized / or not, yes. Simple voltage signal into the automatic transmission refusing to engage drive or reverse, yes. Cellular data communication out when immobilizer systems are being tampered with (or the vehicle is being moved without authorization): absolutely. Something that requires ECU replacement if the proper anti-theft code isn't received? That's too far, IMO. If you've got 4+ coded modules scattered in various hard to reach places in the vehicle, that's more than enough "security".
Like cryptography, it's more a matter of "how long" will the message remain secure. Same for vehicle theft. They can always drag the vehicle up onto a flatbed trailer (with a faraday cage on top), then go do surgery until they've gotten what they want from it - up to and including "pwning" the systems to make the whole thing their own to drive unimpaired by immobilization systems.
Come to think of it, one more thing I would approve of in those immobilizer systems would be that the "phone home" system refuses to send an "everything is hunky dory" signal when it loses contact with any of the other parts of the immobilizer systems. So, at least you'd have a once per whatever check in interval you have set last known location before the phone home system was defeated.
I would fully approve a "driver not impaired" system that transmits encoded IR pulses that can be read at a distance "sounding the all clear" to anyone who cares, and possibly even a flashing light indicating that the driver has failed the impairment test - which the driver could, of course, defeat, but then you're driving around in a new vehicle that's not telling if the driver has passed the impairment test or not - probable cause for a stop, and dramatically increased liklihood of a maximum sentence upon conviction, but otherwise your shiny new two ton lethal missile is still your own to get home in, even when the system does screw up.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Reziac on Monday December 25, @03:03AM (7 children)
"No, a fault in the anti-theft system should not require replacement of the entire wiring harness of the vehicle."
I actually had this happen. It also required replacing the alternator, which it somehow managed to blow out when it failed.
For the record, it was a "Cobra" branded antitheft doohickey that came with a used truck, and some idiot had wired it into EVERY electrical circuit in the truck, including (I shit you not) the headlights and cabin lights. When it lost its little mind, the truck refused to start (but it sure made a lot of noise). Disconnecting it sufficient to get the truck to accept a jump start took two hours of tracking down all the damned connectors (naturally it did this at midnight on the coldest night of the year, in the middle of nowhere, and lucky as hell there was a mechanic with the skills and willing to make the service call) and rewiring where needed. It was, when he was done, effectively a new wiring harness.
And THEN we discover it's fucked the alternator, having apparently blown a giant short through the system. And wound up having to haul it to the mechanic's shop anyway (which he kindly did not charge me for). Cobra owes me $700.
Back to the nominal topic, I vaguely recall a case of a diabetic who was in some sort of serious insulin trouble, was stopped, blew "drunk" and died as a result of being hauled to jail instead of to the ER. How long until THAT happens with a required interlock?
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 25, @03:42AM (6 children)
I never had an alarm system that serious, but we bought a used car with some lame thing in it so stealth I didn't know it was there until it decided we were breaking into our car whilst driving through the grocery store parking lot right by the store entrance. Siren blaring, engine stalled, found the fuse panel and sure enough pulling the rigged looking fuse out put everything normal again, took all of 30 embarrassing seconds. Glad the previous owner was clueless about that.
The diabetic probably had less business driving than someone blowing a BAC of 0.15 from tequila shots. Cops will be cops, they kill all kinds of medically fragile people all the time and usually get away with less than a stern warning - that's something that a true justice system would let the surviving family sue the department administration for negligence in training and safe operation of the crude tools they put on the streets.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday December 25, @04:24AM (5 children)
I wonder what the ratio of "car alarm actually prevented theft" is to "pissed off owner and everyone else". Glad yours was less of an Adventure.
Yeah, diabetic shouldn't have been, but people do drive themselves to the hospital, and sometimes little choice.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 25, @05:06AM (4 children)
God forbid you or anyone you care about is ever in need, but...
My father in law needed a couple of trips to the emergency room and getting him down the stairs required more lifting power than anyone had at the time, so the EMTs were called and naturally they provided an ambulance ride to the hospital both times. We saw a bill flash by briefly in the amount of something crazy like $7K per trip... nobody ever suggested that we actually consider paying it. So: that's healthcare in America: ludicrously expensive, or free... hard to predict which way that one is going to bounce.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday December 25, @05:25AM (3 children)
It's not that so much as if you live way out in the sticks, you might be better to not wait for the EMTs, because doubling your time enroute, when that becomes hours, might not be the good course.
The third option is to pay cash. Sign hanging in the Los Angeles County public clinic (this in 2010) listed a bunch of common stuff and a price for each, and the highest price was: "Any surgery: $400." Guy ahead of me stares in disbelief, then asks the desk, "Why so little?" A: That's the cash price, because that's what it actually costs us. Everything above that derives from fighting with collections and insurance.
It's not medical care that's expensive, it's the side effect of insurance, and the nickel-and-diming itemization it enforces, because insurance wants to know why for every nickel and dime it pays out. (Watched the same thing happen in vet med when pet insurance came along. Cost of a spay went from $60 to $600, real numbers, almost overnight.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 25, @04:40PM (2 children)
Agreed, it's like an endlessly funded arms race of billers vs coders and their whole supporting casts. Each side burying the other in endless mountains of documentation attempting to justify paying, not paying, how much to pay, and both sides implicitly acknowledging the cost of this documentation war by allowing the prices to inflate to cover the colossal cost of their Kafkaesque adversarial process of "price negotiation."
Sadly, there is a tiny positive impact on patient care in that all this documentation can be, and occasionally is, analyzed to track outcomes for various treatment options. Not that standard of care includes consideration of this relatively easy to access information. When my father was diagnosed with kidney cancer the first recommended course of treatment would have likely killed him with the biopsy, then they recommended removal of the entire kidney because they could do that on site next week, when a 3 week delay and trip across town made an option to save 85% of his already diminished kidney function with 95% chance of success on the first attempt.
In other words, the standards for malpractice are too damn low when it comes to recommending surgical procedures when a twelve year old can come up with better recommendations via Google+PubMed and 30 minutes of reading.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday December 25, @07:25PM (1 child)
While back I came across compiled stats on penetration of health insurance (which didn't really take hold until the mid-1980s) vs billed costs, and the correlation was unmistakable. (Even if I hadn't watched it happen firsthand with vet bills, where I had backroom privs and saw it hands-on.) Not long before, I'd paid $10 for a drop-in to see a specialist, and $90 for one day in hospital.
But that's a good point on how it's also enforced collection of outcome stats; data we did not have before, other than what came out of structured studies. Now that you bring it up, I expect this is how someone managed to drag together 40 years of data on sodium-restricted diets (turns out except in very specific cases, this actually elevates mortality) because they sure did not put half a million people in a box to study their diets across 40 years.
My observation, having been forced to read the literature in sheer self defense, is that 95% of the research never filters down to ordinary doctors in the trenches. They know what they learned in school and some continuing ed since, but they do NOT know the vast mass of research that is out there for their specialties, and are unlikely to believe it when a patient does know of it unless you beat their heads square with a printout from a source they trust, and maybe not even then (because a lot of it is case-specific and therefore apparently contradictory, and sometimes they remember what they learned wrong, too). So I understand why they do what they think right (or at least "does no harm") even when it is absolutely the wrong thing to do, but most of the time we whose lives are impacted by it really have no recourse. I'm glad for your father, he was lucky.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 25, @09:03PM
>the research never filters down to ordinary doctors in the trenches. They know what they learned in school and some continuing ed since, but they do NOT know the vast mass of research that is out there for their specialties, and are unlikely to believe it when a patient does know of it unless you beat their heads square with a printout from a source they trust, and maybe not even then
Yeah, I used to work for a research oriented med device company and we would go to annual conventions to show our warez to doctors who cared. Attendance stats were around 12K M.D.s and we'd see dozens to a few hundred pass our booth with some level of interest. These were the people using our devices to collect data for published studies.
Then one year we went to a "bigger" conference held in Orlando, attendance stats published at 45K M.D.s in specialties like cardiology, etc. The vendor booths were about the same, but the M.D.s perusing the booths were non-existent, less than 5% of what we would see at the research oriented conference - not just our booths, all the booths - even though the others had much fancier swag than they carried at the research conference. We went to a presentation that followed one given by C. Everett Coop - then U.S. Secretary of Medicine - his talk had about 40 attendees in a hall sized for 1000, then it was our turn in the big hall and our friends and family numbered about 10, with 5 others present probably directly related to the other speaker. I do understand that the hole-in-one contest for the new Cadillac was better attended with several hundred M.D.s (out of 45K) showing up for that, but ALL of the M.D.s went home with CE credits, whether they attended the class presentations or not.
The Docs aren't wrong that a lot of what you read that seems like it might apply to you, doesn't, and you can do a great deal more harm than good if you just jump into treatment without really knowing... on the other hand, so many of them know what they know, do what they do, and as my mom says: "go see a surgeon, get surgery." They are constantly practicing whatever it is they do, and they generally will gladly do it on you if it looks like you wouldn't be a malpractice case if they practiced on you too. Is it any good for your long-term health? Well, they generally have some boilerplate about the benefits (have a tumor in your kidney? we can take the whole kidney out with a 99.44% chance of not killing you outright with the surgery... that's gotta be good, right?) My mom had a procedure to lift and tuck her eyelids so her eyes can open wider like they used to when she was younger, all kinds of published benefits right down to alleviating depression and dementia - so that's what that surgeon sells to basically everyone over 50 who walks in his door.
The sad thing is, even when you do have a smart doc who cares and wants to use the literature to help you, it can take days to weeks to sift through all the available material to reach a decent conclusion about the best course of action, and oftentimes when you're in bad shape you don't have days to weeks to wait. The MD I worked for lost a lifelong friend that way - best people in the field did the best they could, but basically killed him within 72 hours of admission. Three weeks later, my MD figured out what really happened - he didn't blame the attending physicians, they did the best that anybody could be expected to do in the situation, it just turned out poorly. This is where all that mass of data being collected, combined with some AI magic sauce, might just start helping people better than we have been doing.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Sunday December 24, @04:39PM (1 child)
The first assumption is this will prevent the deaths. I find that unlikely. Its reckless to drive 75 in a 15 MPH school zone and socially we've defined it as being reckless to drive after having a drink. The root cause of both fatalities is reckless personality not simply banning ethanol.
The second assumption is this will be effective. My guess is this can only be performative and essentially act as a tax. They can't base it on driver behavior because the political shitstorm that will happen based on demographics. All we need is a couple front page stories about "old white guys permitted to drive after slamming a six pack while sober black teenagers prevented from driving to work and school" and the whole system will be flushed. And they can't seriously do a chemistry based solution where the sniff the air or every uber driver will be out of business because their passengers are drunk. In fact the entire concept of "Designated Driver" might be voided by this technology. Which might be the stealth intention of this; eliminate gig economy driver jobs by only permitting cars with licensed taxi medallions to transport drunk people.
My guess is when this doesn't work the usual authoritarians will come out of the woodwork with "well of course it doesn't work we need something even stricter and more punitive" not because its true but because they get off on the idea of strict punishment and watching the world burn. See how they're STILL pushing failed ideologies like communism, gun control, war on drugs, etc.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 24, @07:37PM
>The root cause of both fatalities is reckless personality not simply banning ethanol.
Yes, and no. Particularly 30+ years ago there was a social attitude of acceptable irresponsibility while "hammered" particularly with ethanol. 30+ years of MADD and similar campaigns have shifted those attitudes, a little.
Responsible people, and devices, getting in the face of drunk people at the moment they are attempting to drive does make a difference in fatality rates. In the UK more drunk pedestrians are killed than drunk driving fatalities, I think that is moving the needle in the right direction.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by AnonTechie on Sunday December 24, @08:42PM
This article gives a more detailed explanation of road accidents in the USA with a breakup of accidents in each state. It might be interesting to peruse, for those who enjoy crunching numbers.
Fatal car crash statistics 2023 [usatoday.com]
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 4, Touché) by darkfeline on Sunday December 24, @11:51PM
Time to play Guess the Failure again. Because if one thing is certain, such a law will have effects except the intended one. Will people import cars, thus leaving the poor to deal with the inconvenience? Will there be apps to work around it? Will hacking/rooting cars become vogue? Will mechanics offer unlocking as a service? Will carjacking be the normal mode of transportation?
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Monday December 25, @01:01AM (4 children)
Maybe car computers should be monitoring driving behavior rather than simply measuring alcohol levels. Perhaps we should redefine what impaired driving actually is. If I'm behind someone who has no one in front of them, and they continually speed up and slow down to speeds above and below the speed limit, I would mark them impaired. Someone continually hitting their brakes when not in a stopping situation? I would mark them impaired. Someone driving out of their lane with nothing in front of them? Driving way below the speed limit, especially if they are not in the right lane? I would mark them impaired. If a car is being driven in such an impaired manner, perhaps there should be a notification light or such so that traffic safety enforcement knows to monitor that vehicle or pull them over for a check.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 25, @02:40AM (2 children)
> monitoring driving behavior rather than simply measuring alcohol levels
Sounds good on the surface, but as pointed out in a previous post: When you get to a construction zone or an area where there are a bunch of pedestrians on the side of the road (etc), then you have to leave your lane, slow down "unexpectedly" and do other things that look an awful lot like impaired driving to a monitoring system.
Those are false positives that could cause a lot of trouble for someone who is completely innocent.
These nanny & tattletale systems are (imo) going to generate some backlash. Whether it's enough to stop them remains to be seen.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday December 25, @03:14AM
I once ran a red light to give a fire truck room to get by in an otherwise-blocked intersection. That behavior would not have been allowed by any black box or nanny system.
I have twice run off the road to avoid a head-on collision -- thanks to the well-intentioned "move over" law passed by California. Trouble is some drivers don't distinguish between two-lane and divided highways, they just move over even if it's into the oncoming lane (mostly, I think, because fear of a very expensive ticket gives them brain-lock).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday December 26, @01:09AM
Obviously there are a lot of potential issues with this sort of thing. They shouldn't be implemented in any form, especially in reporting to insurance companies, until the AI involved is a lot more advanced. Construction zones should probably include something that shuts off the monitor, or changes it to something that alerts the drivers of their behavior, and no one else. Pedestrians or cyclists on the side of the road should also accomplish the same thing. There's always a whole lot of grey area that AI needs to be capable of accounting for before it can be trusted.
I think a potential marker of when "they" are getting to the right place should be when the driving "aids", such as those on Toyotas, are genuinely useful rather than annoying or even dangerous. I don't ever want a car to slam on the brakes for me, or yank my car back into a lane if I veer slightly out of it, or even just setting off a startling (to one experiencing it for the first time) alarm because I'm pulling up to a stop sign or light at the same time a bus is crossing the road ahead and heading towards the curb for a stop.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday December 25, @03:10AM
You can already get a black box that records driving behavior. State Farm will give you a discount if you install one (the downside, aside from the tracking, is the 1GB per day of data that it sends via your cellphone).
I expect at some point that too will become mandatory.
But agreed, the problem isn't drunks, it's impaired generally, for whatever reason. Might be texting, might be lost, might be granny can't see anymore, might be driving-while-idiot.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.