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There are many many issues with this proposal. What, for example, if you're living in a rural area, then your wife goes into labor (or there is any kind of oth

There are many many issues with this proposal. What, for example, if you're living in a rural area, then your wife goes into labor (or there is any kind of other emergency) and the car thinks your somewhat "erratic" driving style, due to the stress of the situation, warrants killing the engine? It only talks about detecting "impairment" which may mean a lot of things. Or maybe you had a beer and then the emergency happens, and the car detects "passively and accurately" your BAC. Banning drunk, drugged and impaired driving is good. But every rule has exceptions, and software is generally too rigid to account for every possible exceptional case. There won't be a "It's an emergency" button (because a lot of drunks would just press it), nor a "I am lawfully driving on my own private property" or a "I am not actually impaired, I had to drive 'erratic' a moment ago not because I am drunk or fell asleep, but because a kid ran into a street and I had to do an evasive maneuver" one. That is assuming the software is working "correctly" in the first place. Which I am very doubtful about here, because they aren't trying to model something deterministic, but model something that will use some kind of "learning" to spit out some probabilities. That aside, the privacy implications look pretty real to me. Once you have a system that monitors your driving proficiency, BAC or both, a lot of companies will get curious about that. Insurers may start to politely ask for the data if you want lower premiums, or a contract at all. No more car leases unless you can provide a "positive" driving score. Judges will sign warrants for such data. And so on.

jpambrun 5y ago
If you are impaired by your stress level you probably should not drive. Putting other at risk to reduce your perceived risk is not a decision for you to make.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  See my comment upthread about my wife being attacked. I can assure you that having been choked almost to the point of unconsciousness had her stress levels through the roof. But alone at night in a dark parking lot in a rural town, your solution is that she should not have been allowed to run to her car and drive off?
- realce 5y ago
  So when Jason Voorhees is hunting me down, the last camp councilor left, and I find the keys to the van... You think I shouldn't reduce that risk because of the public good?
  - pas 5y ago
    Luke, use the guns! It's the US after all. So shoot the sensor and it'll detect a malfunction and allow you to drive!
  - jpambrun 5y ago
    I am saying that in that case, you are not a good position to assess public good vs. "your good". Any human being would instinctively take slightly better odds for the themselves at the risk of much worst odds for others. With this assumption, maybe the car should take that decision.
    - kelnos 5y ago
      So the correct course of action in this situation (being chased by a murderer) is to make a decision that 100% ensures the denied-driver's death, in order to prevent the possible, and probably unlikely death of an bystander due to said driver's likely emotionally-impaired driving? No, that's not ethical reasoning at all.
      - jpambrun 5y ago
        It's not what I said; I didn't bring up Jason the serial killer.. my point was that you can't ask people to judge balance to risk when it comes to them.. That said, the false-negatives of people really being chased by serial killers is probably worth it compare to all real victims of dangerous or drunk drivers that could be saved.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mdp2021 5y ago
> Once you have a system that monitors your driving proficiency ... Insurers It's already working like that. Some insurance companies sell you products including a physical "monitor" (GPS based, I believe) that will evaluate your driving: the price of insurance will differ.
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  No need for a physical monitor, just install an app on your phone! https://www.intact.ca/qc/en/personal-insurance/vehicle/car/mydrive.html https://www.intact.ca/qc/en/personal-insurance/vehicle/car/m...
- mint2 5y ago
  Those obd2 port dongles have been on the way out for a few years. Too expensive. Insurers just use and app on your phone to collect data on driving for those who opt in. But that’s only for now. Ford and Tesla are leading the way with the on board data. The dongle was a Hacky work around to begin with, so now it’s being removed from the loop and maybe the car mfgs will be able to charge a fee to insurers.
  - aembleton 5y ago
    Or they'll start selling insurance themselves. With that data they can undercut the rest of the market.
    - ilikepi 5y ago
      Insurance is bundled with Volvo's subscription service offered on some models. https://www.volvocars.com/us/care-by-volvo/ https://www.volvocars.com/us/care-by-volvo/
    - hnburnsy 5y ago
      CA and TX... https://www.tesla.com/insurance https://www.tesla.com/insurance
    - mint2 5y ago
consp 5y ago
Maybe you could inestead invest in an upgrade to the ambulance service so it covers these kind of things? If you are driving that irresponsible you shouldn't be putting your wife and unborn child's life in danger in the first place.
- lvs 5y ago
  Total surveillance should not be making these decisions for the citizenry. You can have better ambulances without total surveillance and population control. It's hard to get more dystopian cyberpunk than a car that sometimes won't run because it doesn't like something about you.
- kelnos 5y ago
  That's basically never going to happen. Emergency services in the US are already in a precarious position. And there will never be enough funding to increase coverage such that people out in rural areas can expect life-saving response all the time. Often people will die if you have to wait for an ambulance, and the only safe option is to drive the person to the hospital yourself, even if you're impaired. (Then again, in the case of childbirth, it certainly could be safer in some cases to allow the birth to happen at home, rather than drive dangerously to a hospital a half hour away. Hard to say, and a spouse is usually not in a great position to evaluate the risk of staying at home.)
bambax 5y ago
I'm all for privacy and such, but am not sure we should allow drunk drivers because their wives are about to give birth? Isn't that even more dangerous?
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure that giving birth in a vehicle pulled over at the side of the road is pretty dangerous. Ambulances exist, but are expensive in the US. The point really wasn't that we should allow drunk drivers because wives might give birth: It was pointing out that software won't be able to tell the difference between impaired driving and fairly normal reasons for driving erratically. In other words, they won't know if you are getting a police escort to the hospital (like my parents did when my sister was born) or driving impaired.
  - unmole 5y ago
    > Ambulances exist, but are expensive in the US. Wait, you have to pay for an emergency ambulance in the US?!
    - daddylongstroke 5y ago
      My wife's grandmother while being treated for cancer last year, was literally taken by ambulance (god only knows why) from one side of the medical campus to a building on the other side (3 minute ride) for around $9K. This is Chicago, so hopefully not typical. :-D
      - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
        Liability. Same thing happened to my wife and I asked why I couldn't just put her in a wheelchair and push her across the parking lot. Since she hadn't been discharged, she was still in their care so if anything happened, they would be legally liable. However, either insurance took care of it somehow, or the hospital never charged for it because it didn't show up on the bill.
    - 5y ago
user-the-name 5y ago
You can "what if" anything you want. That is not a valid argument. How many times will your theoretical scenario actually take place? How much is that compared to how many times the system will prevent a person from losing their life or becoming disabled for life because of a drunk driver?
- coldtea 5y ago
  When did we asked for / subscribed to an automatic system to save our lives in those scenarios?
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    Apparently in the last election.
- 87329868723 5y ago
  The theory that the "system will prevent a person from losing their life or becoming disabled for life because of a drunk driver" is just as much of a "what if" as anything they said. I would say it's more likely to be abused and malfunction than it is to work as advertised.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    And how would you back up what you say?
    - 87329868723 5y ago
      Presumably the same way you would back up the assumption that it will work, preconceived notions on the effects of regulations in general?
      - user-the-name 5y ago
        You don't think that these technologies actually work? Is that what you are saying?
jacquesm 5y ago
Nothing you can't solve with an 'emergency override' button misuse of which will automatically result in you losing your drivers license.
- koolba 5y ago
  So press the button and guilty until proven innocent?
  - shawabawa3 5y ago
    no? Press the button and innocent until proven guilty
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    No, press the button and innocent until reviewed and found to continue to be innocent. Similar to those 'in case of emergency, break glass (abuse will be prosecuted)' emergency brakes on trains and other similar constructs. This is a solved problem, I don't see why you would attach any special significance to it.
    - koolba 5y ago
      Having every previously analog device around us turn into a puppet of the police state is not a solution to a problem. It’s the basis for a series of new problems. And like all of these nanny state mandates, we end up paying the bill.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      In practice what that sounds like is well to do jerks in their nice suburbs and gated communities will be free to drunkenly rearrange their driveway (for whatever benign reason, to get the lawnmower out of the garage or something) and that people in "bad" areas where there is little political power and the .gov is more or less free to abuse them at will will found guilty and be given an option to not be found guilty if they pay into the system some other way (fine and/or driving school is the usual mechanism). Basically it will just become a side channel for revenue just like everything else about drunk driving already is.
technothrasher 5y ago
> I had to drive 'erratic' a moment ago not because I am drunk or fell asleep, but because a kid ran into a street and I had to do an evasive maneuver" one. I kept getting warnings of 'erratic' driving from my VW and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I finally figured it out. The car was seeing asphalt repair patches on the road, which are by their nature wiggly lines. It clearly figures the line is straight and the car is swerving all over the place. It also wants to hit the brakes any time the car in front is braking and my foot is on the throttle. Ok, but this fails constantly in two situations. First is if the car in front is turning left and I'm moving around it on the right. Second is if I'm far enough back that I'm ok with light throttle even though the car in front is braking. So, yes, I have less than full confidence that a drunk driving detection system won't fail. The question really becomes whether the net benefit outweighs the potential failures. With the VW applying the brakes, I accepted the annoyances the first time it saved me from plowing into the car in front of me when they unexpectedly hit the brakes on a highway on-ramp and I was watching the traffic on the highway instead of the car in front.
- mustyoshi 5y ago
  Have you (are you even able to) reported these issues to VW to improve their models?
  - jtdev 5y ago
    Yah, it’s the consumers responsibility to chase around a multi billion dollar, multi national corporations QC problems…
  - MerelyMortal 5y ago
    That sounds like the wrong direction to go. That normalizes that it's okay to push bad safety programming as long as the onus is on the user to search for and attempt a conveluded way to contact the manufacturer, at which point the manufacturer will most likely ignore it anyway. I doubt VW has a hotline for reporting this kind of thing, and if so, I bet it's not posted on the car anywhere.
S5yDyAk3XoQH5 5y ago
Yep, and if there is an exception, all the people will use that to bypass it... thus no reason to even have the detecting in the first place. Happens all the time.
jsonne 5y ago
I was driving a Citroen in rural Ireland that had an active lane correction if it thought you were drifting out of the lane. The thing is that in rural Ireland many roads are one lane and have no marking at all so the thing was constantly forcing the car into directions that were actively dangerous. Towards other cars on narrow roads in the center. Towards shoulders with steep drop offs. I have deep skepticism about this sort of technology and remember that a 0.001% failure rate is someone's kid, husband, wife, brother, sister, mom, dad, etc not just some statistic. I'll be buying older cars that don't have this for as long as possible.
- swhitt 5y ago
  There's typically a button to toggle it on/off somewhere near the steering wheel. I got a new car a couple of months ago that has this, and was experiencing similar issues on rural Texas farm roads. I just had to look up where mine was and turn it off temporarily.
  - packetlost 5y ago
    I have a VW with similar technology. Even on regular highways it's attempted to veer off onto an exit pretty consistently.
    - lsaferite 5y ago
      My Kia lets you set the level of correction as well. So it's can be gentle, "uh, pay attention", or "get over here!"
  - OldHand2018 5y ago
    I have an Audi - the button to turn it off and on is at the tip of the turn signal stalk. You can toggle it with your pinky without removing your hands from the steering wheel or eyes from the road. I also have a Subaru - turning it off or on requires three levels of menu navigation, and you have to use the center console touch screen. I suppose they do their testing and validation in drastically different environments!
- 5y ago
CWuestefeld 5y ago
Right. How long before we consider as "impaired": - Hasn't had their covid-19 vaccination/booster? - Immigration visa expired? Yeah, it's a slippery slope argument. But the track record of the government taking advantage of such openings is bad.
HighPlainsDrftr 5y ago
I've thought for a while if you want to stop drunk / impaired driving, that the system could be reworked. 1. Require an electronic drivers license that stores data on your driving skills, reaction time, and some metadata about solving problems. 2. When you get into the car, you have to solve a medium complexity puzzle. Eg hit a certain color in a row on a touchpad - think simple simon. Or a math, quiz, something. 3. If you can't solve it, the car won't start. Or have an emergency button that allows you to start the car, but then it turns on the hazards and honks the horn while your driving (showing that you haven't proven that your reflexes are up to par). This allows everyone to watch out for you, and can bring the attention to LE. Eek. This is just captcha for driving. I don't like it. But it might save lives!
- lamontcg 5y ago
  Might get women raped as well. Having to solve a captcha while you're under stress and you want to get the fuck away from wherever you are is a terrible idea. Honking the horn may also be horrible if what you want to do is not alert anyone that you're getting away until you get somewhere safer.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    This was immediately what I thought also. My wife was attacked in a parking lot late one night and managed to kick the guy and run to her car and drive off before he could recover. So now we have to run to the car and do a math problem before the car starts?
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  this captcha business is adversarial. I would refuse to drive a vehicle that treats me as a criminal by default (same reason I avoid airports). Having a different class of license effect the cars performance is interesting tho. I guess you'd want to rely on biometrics so that high-skilled-drivers don't become a target to steal their license. Probably need a way to revoke licenses, which means the car will need to stay online at all times. Brings to mind those rental cars that won't unlock if they're in an underground garage or out in the woods. IMO it's all too much complexity to rely on, a car should be a machine that goes when you hit the gas. If you want to save lives, more public transport and slower speeds + roundabouts is the answer.
kingcharles 5y ago
A real scenario that actually happened to someone I was in jail with (and they were jailed for this). They were (legally drunk) passenger in a car on a remote section of highway late at night. (Sober, diabetic) Driver's blood sugar too low and driver fell unconscious. Passenger grabbed wheel, pulled car to shoulder. Dialed 911. Ambulance to take too long. Moves driver over and gets behind wheel. Gets most of way to hospital. Pulled over by cops. Cops arrest him and drive unconscious person to hospital. I introduced him to the defense of "necessity" while in jail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_(criminal_law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_(criminal_law) My point is.. the driver might well have died if the car had totally refused to function because he was over the limit.
- kelnos 5y ago
  And that's the thing: these sorts of software systems don't and cannot ever understand edge cases. Short of full AI that can reason about the situation and make a decision (even then, it may make the wrong decision, just as people make wrong decisions sometimes), this is always going to be a problem. An emergency override button can mitigate this problem, but then you have to weigh how often that override will be abused, and what to do about that.

jpambrun 5y ago

If you are impaired by your stress level you probably should not drive. Putting other at risk to reduce your perceived risk is not a decision for you to make.

HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
See my comment upthread about my wife being attacked. I can assure you that having been choked almost to the point of unconsciousness had her stress levels through the roof. But alone at night in a dark parking lot in a rural town, your solution is that she should not have been allowed to run to her car and drive off?
realce 5y ago
So when Jason Voorhees is hunting me down, the last camp councilor left, and I find the keys to the van... You think I shouldn't reduce that risk because of the public good?
- pas 5y ago
  Luke, use the guns! It's the US after all. So shoot the sensor and it'll detect a malfunction and allow you to drive!
- jpambrun 5y ago
  I am saying that in that case, you are not a good position to assess public good vs. "your good". Any human being would instinctively take slightly better odds for the themselves at the risk of much worst odds for others. With this assumption, maybe the car should take that decision.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    So the correct course of action in this situation (being chased by a murderer) is to make a decision that 100% ensures the denied-driver's death, in order to prevent the possible, and probably unlikely death of an bystander due to said driver's likely emotionally-impaired driving? No, that's not ethical reasoning at all.
    - jpambrun 5y ago
      It's not what I said; I didn't bring up Jason the serial killer.. my point was that you can't ask people to judge balance to risk when it comes to them.. That said, the false-negatives of people really being chased by serial killers is probably worth it compare to all real victims of dangerous or drunk drivers that could be saved.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mdp2021 5y ago

> Once you have a system that monitors your driving proficiency ... Insurers It's already working like that. Some insurance companies sell you products including a physical "monitor" (GPS based, I believe) that will evaluate your driving: the price of insurance will differ.

monkeybutton 5y ago
No need for a physical monitor, just install an app on your phone! https://www.intact.ca/qc/en/personal-insurance/vehicle/car/mydrive.html https://www.intact.ca/qc/en/personal-insurance/vehicle/car/m...
mint2 5y ago
Those obd2 port dongles have been on the way out for a few years. Too expensive. Insurers just use and app on your phone to collect data on driving for those who opt in. But that’s only for now. Ford and Tesla are leading the way with the on board data. The dongle was a Hacky work around to begin with, so now it’s being removed from the loop and maybe the car mfgs will be able to charge a fee to insurers.
- aembleton 5y ago
  Or they'll start selling insurance themselves. With that data they can undercut the rest of the market.
  - ilikepi 5y ago
    Insurance is bundled with Volvo's subscription service offered on some models. https://www.volvocars.com/us/care-by-volvo/ https://www.volvocars.com/us/care-by-volvo/
  - hnburnsy 5y ago
    CA and TX... https://www.tesla.com/insurance https://www.tesla.com/insurance
  - mint2 5y ago

consp 5y ago

Maybe you could inestead invest in an upgrade to the ambulance service so it covers these kind of things? If you are driving that irresponsible you shouldn't be putting your wife and unborn child's life in danger in the first place.

lvs 5y ago
Total surveillance should not be making these decisions for the citizenry. You can have better ambulances without total surveillance and population control. It's hard to get more dystopian cyberpunk than a car that sometimes won't run because it doesn't like something about you.
kelnos 5y ago
That's basically never going to happen. Emergency services in the US are already in a precarious position. And there will never be enough funding to increase coverage such that people out in rural areas can expect life-saving response all the time. Often people will die if you have to wait for an ambulance, and the only safe option is to drive the person to the hospital yourself, even if you're impaired. (Then again, in the case of childbirth, it certainly could be safer in some cases to allow the birth to happen at home, rather than drive dangerously to a hospital a half hour away. Hard to say, and a spouse is usually not in a great position to evaluate the risk of staying at home.)

bambax 5y ago

I'm all for privacy and such, but am not sure we should allow drunk drivers because their wives are about to give birth? Isn't that even more dangerous?

Broken_Hippo 5y ago
I'm pretty sure that giving birth in a vehicle pulled over at the side of the road is pretty dangerous. Ambulances exist, but are expensive in the US. The point really wasn't that we should allow drunk drivers because wives might give birth: It was pointing out that software won't be able to tell the difference between impaired driving and fairly normal reasons for driving erratically. In other words, they won't know if you are getting a police escort to the hospital (like my parents did when my sister was born) or driving impaired.
- unmole 5y ago
  > Ambulances exist, but are expensive in the US. Wait, you have to pay for an emergency ambulance in the US?!
  - daddylongstroke 5y ago
    My wife's grandmother while being treated for cancer last year, was literally taken by ambulance (god only knows why) from one side of the medical campus to a building on the other side (3 minute ride) for around $9K. This is Chicago, so hopefully not typical. :-D
    - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
      Liability. Same thing happened to my wife and I asked why I couldn't just put her in a wheelchair and push her across the parking lot. Since she hadn't been discharged, she was still in their care so if anything happened, they would be legally liable. However, either insurance took care of it somehow, or the hospital never charged for it because it didn't show up on the bill.
  - 5y ago

user-the-name 5y ago

You can "what if" anything you want. That is not a valid argument. How many times will your theoretical scenario actually take place? How much is that compared to how many times the system will prevent a person from losing their life or becoming disabled for life because of a drunk driver?

coldtea 5y ago
When did we asked for / subscribed to an automatic system to save our lives in those scenarios?
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Apparently in the last election.
87329868723 5y ago
The theory that the "system will prevent a person from losing their life or becoming disabled for life because of a drunk driver" is just as much of a "what if" as anything they said. I would say it's more likely to be abused and malfunction than it is to work as advertised.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  And how would you back up what you say?
  - 87329868723 5y ago
    Presumably the same way you would back up the assumption that it will work, preconceived notions on the effects of regulations in general?
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      You don't think that these technologies actually work? Is that what you are saying?

jacquesm 5y ago

Nothing you can't solve with an 'emergency override' button misuse of which will automatically result in you losing your drivers license.

koolba 5y ago
So press the button and guilty until proven innocent?
- shawabawa3 5y ago
  no? Press the button and innocent until proven guilty
- jacquesm 5y ago
  No, press the button and innocent until reviewed and found to continue to be innocent. Similar to those 'in case of emergency, break glass (abuse will be prosecuted)' emergency brakes on trains and other similar constructs. This is a solved problem, I don't see why you would attach any special significance to it.
  - koolba 5y ago
    Having every previously analog device around us turn into a puppet of the police state is not a solution to a problem. It’s the basis for a series of new problems. And like all of these nanny state mandates, we end up paying the bill.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    In practice what that sounds like is well to do jerks in their nice suburbs and gated communities will be free to drunkenly rearrange their driveway (for whatever benign reason, to get the lawnmower out of the garage or something) and that people in "bad" areas where there is little political power and the .gov is more or less free to abuse them at will will found guilty and be given an option to not be found guilty if they pay into the system some other way (fine and/or driving school is the usual mechanism). Basically it will just become a side channel for revenue just like everything else about drunk driving already is.

technothrasher 5y ago

> I had to drive 'erratic' a moment ago not because I am drunk or fell asleep, but because a kid ran into a street and I had to do an evasive maneuver" one. I kept getting warnings of 'erratic' driving from my VW and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I finally figured it out. The car was seeing asphalt repair patches on the road, which are by their nature wiggly lines. It clearly figures the line is straight and the car is swerving all over the place. It also wants to hit the brakes any time the car in front is braking and my foot is on the throttle. Ok, but this fails constantly in two situations. First is if the car in front is turning left and I'm moving around it on the right. Second is if I'm far enough back that I'm ok with light throttle even though the car in front is braking. So, yes, I have less than full confidence that a drunk driving detection system won't fail. The question really becomes whether the net benefit outweighs the potential failures. With the VW applying the brakes, I accepted the annoyances the first time it saved me from plowing into the car in front of me when they unexpectedly hit the brakes on a highway on-ramp and I was watching the traffic on the highway instead of the car in front.

mustyoshi 5y ago
Have you (are you even able to) reported these issues to VW to improve their models?
- jtdev 5y ago
  Yah, it’s the consumers responsibility to chase around a multi billion dollar, multi national corporations QC problems…
- MerelyMortal 5y ago
  That sounds like the wrong direction to go. That normalizes that it's okay to push bad safety programming as long as the onus is on the user to search for and attempt a conveluded way to contact the manufacturer, at which point the manufacturer will most likely ignore it anyway. I doubt VW has a hotline for reporting this kind of thing, and if so, I bet it's not posted on the car anywhere.

S5yDyAk3XoQH5 5y ago

Yep, and if there is an exception, all the people will use that to bypass it... thus no reason to even have the detecting in the first place. Happens all the time.

jsonne 5y ago

I was driving a Citroen in rural Ireland that had an active lane correction if it thought you were drifting out of the lane. The thing is that in rural Ireland many roads are one lane and have no marking at all so the thing was constantly forcing the car into directions that were actively dangerous. Towards other cars on narrow roads in the center. Towards shoulders with steep drop offs. I have deep skepticism about this sort of technology and remember that a 0.001% failure rate is someone's kid, husband, wife, brother, sister, mom, dad, etc not just some statistic. I'll be buying older cars that don't have this for as long as possible.

swhitt 5y ago
There's typically a button to toggle it on/off somewhere near the steering wheel. I got a new car a couple of months ago that has this, and was experiencing similar issues on rural Texas farm roads. I just had to look up where mine was and turn it off temporarily.
- packetlost 5y ago
  I have a VW with similar technology. Even on regular highways it's attempted to veer off onto an exit pretty consistently.
  - lsaferite 5y ago
    My Kia lets you set the level of correction as well. So it's can be gentle, "uh, pay attention", or "get over here!"
- OldHand2018 5y ago
  I have an Audi - the button to turn it off and on is at the tip of the turn signal stalk. You can toggle it with your pinky without removing your hands from the steering wheel or eyes from the road. I also have a Subaru - turning it off or on requires three levels of menu navigation, and you have to use the center console touch screen. I suppose they do their testing and validation in drastically different environments!
5y ago

CWuestefeld 5y ago

Right. How long before we consider as "impaired": - Hasn't had their covid-19 vaccination/booster? - Immigration visa expired? Yeah, it's a slippery slope argument. But the track record of the government taking advantage of such openings is bad.

HighPlainsDrftr 5y ago

I've thought for a while if you want to stop drunk / impaired driving, that the system could be reworked. 1. Require an electronic drivers license that stores data on your driving skills, reaction time, and some metadata about solving problems. 2. When you get into the car, you have to solve a medium complexity puzzle. Eg hit a certain color in a row on a touchpad - think simple simon. Or a math, quiz, something. 3. If you can't solve it, the car won't start. Or have an emergency button that allows you to start the car, but then it turns on the hazards and honks the horn while your driving (showing that you haven't proven that your reflexes are up to par). This allows everyone to watch out for you, and can bring the attention to LE. Eek. This is just captcha for driving. I don't like it. But it might save lives!

lamontcg 5y ago
Might get women raped as well. Having to solve a captcha while you're under stress and you want to get the fuck away from wherever you are is a terrible idea. Honking the horn may also be horrible if what you want to do is not alert anyone that you're getting away until you get somewhere safer.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  This was immediately what I thought also. My wife was attacked in a parking lot late one night and managed to kick the guy and run to her car and drive off before he could recover. So now we have to run to the car and do a math problem before the car starts?
jazzyjackson 5y ago
this captcha business is adversarial. I would refuse to drive a vehicle that treats me as a criminal by default (same reason I avoid airports). Having a different class of license effect the cars performance is interesting tho. I guess you'd want to rely on biometrics so that high-skilled-drivers don't become a target to steal their license. Probably need a way to revoke licenses, which means the car will need to stay online at all times. Brings to mind those rental cars that won't unlock if they're in an underground garage or out in the woods. IMO it's all too much complexity to rely on, a car should be a machine that goes when you hit the gas. If you want to save lives, more public transport and slower speeds + roundabouts is the answer.

kingcharles 5y ago

A real scenario that actually happened to someone I was in jail with (and they were jailed for this). They were (legally drunk) passenger in a car on a remote section of highway late at night. (Sober, diabetic) Driver's blood sugar too low and driver fell unconscious. Passenger grabbed wheel, pulled car to shoulder. Dialed 911. Ambulance to take too long. Moves driver over and gets behind wheel. Gets most of way to hospital. Pulled over by cops. Cops arrest him and drive unconscious person to hospital. I introduced him to the defense of "necessity" while in jail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_(criminal_law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_(criminal_law) My point is.. the driver might well have died if the car had totally refused to function because he was over the limit.

kelnos 5y ago
And that's the thing: these sorts of software systems don't and cannot ever understand edge cases. Short of full AI that can reason about the situation and make a decision (even then, it may make the wrong decision, just as people make wrong decisions sometimes), this is always going to be a problem. An emergency override button can mitigate this problem, but then you have to weigh how often that override will be abused, and what to do about that.