3 ms·

Field sobriety tests are like polygraph tests: highly subjective, easily influenced by bias and have little to no scientific backing.

vkou 9y ago
Neither are drug tests for determining whether or not someone is high when they show up to work.
- darpa_escapee 9y ago
  I agree. However, I'd rather get pinged via a quantifiable metric like BAC than someone's opinion regarding my perceived impairment.
  - vkou 9y ago
    If BAC tests pinged you as drunk three weeks after having a drink, you really wouldn't.
    - darpa_escapee 9y ago
      That could be fought while there is little leeway in terms of fighting "my training and 15 years of experience allowed me to determine that the subject was impaired".
      - vkou 9y ago
        In theory, yes. In practice, no. You may be sober as a judge at work, but you'll be out on your ass before you blink if you fail a drug test.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    How exactly would an automated sobriety test make use of a qualitative metric? Is a score on a video game quantifiable enough for you? There are so many "brain training" games that do nothing but score you on your observation, working memory, reflexes, etc. Back in college, everyone had to participate in the psych experiment test pool, where many of the experiments were coded in extremely rudimentary Visual Basic, to show video clips and record the time intervals between on-screen events and keypresses. That's more objective than a human checking your eyeballs to see if there are too many involuntary movements, or making a subjective determination that there weren't enough social displays of submission to the tester. And it scales better to have X computers set up for employees to test and clock in at the same time than to have a supervisor processing the whole line one by one.
    - civilian 9y ago
      Exactly. The only downside I imagine is that it could give false-positives to retarded people. Reaction speed is pretty well correlated with intelligence. I suppose the system could compare your current score with your baseline / sober scores. Or, mentally slow people would simply have less tolerance for being fucked up at work.

vkou 9y ago

Neither are drug tests for determining whether or not someone is high when they show up to work.

darpa_escapee 9y ago
I agree. However, I'd rather get pinged via a quantifiable metric like BAC than someone's opinion regarding my perceived impairment.
- vkou 9y ago
  If BAC tests pinged you as drunk three weeks after having a drink, you really wouldn't.
  - darpa_escapee 9y ago
    That could be fought while there is little leeway in terms of fighting "my training and 15 years of experience allowed me to determine that the subject was impaired".
    - vkou 9y ago
      In theory, yes. In practice, no. You may be sober as a judge at work, but you'll be out on your ass before you blink if you fail a drug test.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  How exactly would an automated sobriety test make use of a qualitative metric? Is a score on a video game quantifiable enough for you? There are so many "brain training" games that do nothing but score you on your observation, working memory, reflexes, etc. Back in college, everyone had to participate in the psych experiment test pool, where many of the experiments were coded in extremely rudimentary Visual Basic, to show video clips and record the time intervals between on-screen events and keypresses. That's more objective than a human checking your eyeballs to see if there are too many involuntary movements, or making a subjective determination that there weren't enough social displays of submission to the tester. And it scales better to have X computers set up for employees to test and clock in at the same time than to have a supervisor processing the whole line one by one.
  - civilian 9y ago
    Exactly. The only downside I imagine is that it could give false-positives to retarded people. Reaction speed is pretty well correlated with intelligence. I suppose the system could compare your current score with your baseline / sober scores. Or, mentally slow people would simply have less tolerance for being fucked up at work.