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My reading of this article is that “kill switch” here seems to be “car determines that you are driving like a drunk person, so shuts down” rather than “some ser

by rtpg 3y ago

My reading of this article is that “kill switch” here seems to be “car determines that you are driving like a drunk person, so shuts down” rather than “some service remotely sends a kill command for reason X to your car”. In the hypothesis that it’s actually kind of easy to figure out if somebody is impaired, I’m pretty conflicted because the upside of not having an impaired person driving is really high. Just I don’t know how possible it is, nor how reliably that would work. On top of that it seems like one step between that and “and the car reports you”.

margalabargala 3y ago
It's easy to find out if someone is driving as though they are impaired, less easy to find out if they actually are. Medical emergencies spring to mind as something that will be hard to distinguish. How many people rushing to the hospital with a pregnant wife in the back will no longer make it before giving birth?
- pinkgolem 3y ago
  I mean.. is it not more helpful if those people wait on the side of the road for 10-15 minutes till an ambulance/helicopter is there? If they are driving like a drunk driver I would assume the same risks are included...
  - sethammons 3y ago
    I have lived the majority of my life in Southern California and the fastest emergency personnel could get to my home is 25 minutes, speeding. I assume you are unfamiliar with rural living, a common shortsightedness I see on this forum.
    - pinkgolem 3y ago
      My city has a whopping 500 people, if it's something urgent... They send out an helicopter. Would be very surprised if there are places further away then 15 minutes from a helicopter where you can reach any sensibel healthcare infrastructure faster by car A women having early contractions, most likely would not qualify even for emergency lights.
  - Aurornis 3y ago
    > If they are driving like a drunk driver This is the core problem: If we assume that the drunk driving protection is 100% accurate and there are never any false positives under any conditions, the bill seems more reasonable. But I’m struggling to understand why people on HN of all places are assuming this drunk driving protection will be absolutely perfect and never trigger unless absolutely justified. Anyone who works with technology doing fuzzy classification or detection tasks knows how impossible it is to get the accuracy being implied in this thread.
- matsemann 3y ago
  That "pregnant wife in backseat" argument is so stupid, and is always being used to excuse all kinds of dangerous driving. The amount of lives saved by someone speeding with a pregnant wife is minuscule compared to the amount of lives being saved by not making driving like a lunatic possible.
  - mcny 3y ago
    I think this kill switch does not belong in the US. Firstly, I've seen people who have DWI get a special license to drive to work and to get groceries. We simply do not have the public transit infrastructure. Come back with this when we have decent coverage of public transit. Secondly, we don't have universal health care. You could end up with thousands in just ambulance expenses if you are out of network. If I am not imminently dying (how can I judge that?), we are driving ourselves. Thirdly, this likely makes cars more expensive. See first point. We can't do that without decent public transit coverage. Yes, we have a lot of people die on the roads in the US. No, the solution isn't as easy as adding a kill switch.
    - krisoft 3y ago
      > Firstly, I've seen people who have DWI get a special license to drive to work and to get groceries. Do they get a licence to drive while intoxicated? Or people with a history of driving while intoxicated are bared from general driving, but get a special licence so they can drive but only to work and to get groceries?
      - actionfromafar 3y ago
        The latter.
        krisoft 3y ago
        In that case how is this an argument against the type of kill switch described?
- orwin 3y ago
  If it's an emergency and you're far enough that this is an issue, waiting for the emergency vehicle is probably faster (they also have access to meds that will slow down contractions or make them less painful). (edit: I don't have a strong opinion on the original subject, but I think you're right. I just don't like your example, hence my comment)
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > How many people rushing to the hospital with a pregnant wife in the back will no longer make it before giving birth? What would be the problem with that? If you don't make it to the hospital before giving birth, you don't need to go to the hospital at all. The reason you might want to be in a hospital while in labor is in case something goes wrong that prevents you from successfully giving birth.
- paulmd 3y ago
  If someone is driving so sleepy or having such a medical crisis that they can’t keep the car on the road, they shouldn’t be driving even if they’re sober. The harm to others doesn’t go away just because it’s “medical”, you are still just as dead if grandpa falls asleep and crosses the centerline. And it is still a crime to do so - you can be arrested for driving too sleepy already. Much like CSAM, this is one where there not clear daylight between the advertised situation and other similar situations (why would you want to stop pedos but leave mass shooters able to communicate?) other than the targeted class being particularly villainized by society at large. People should really have the faith of their convictions and discuss this as a generalized thing, “what is the benefit of having killswitches in all our cars for impaired drivers” and not just pretend that it’s only alcoholics who are dangerous on the road. This will eventually be coming for anyone who displays dangerous driving even if it’s “medical” and should really be viewed in that context. I’m not saying that’s entirely a bad thing either. Maybe we’d all be safer if our cars spied on us 24/7. But people are generally repulsed at that idea because I’m not a filthy drunk driver, how dare you treat me like one. It was never about road safety at all, it was about getting one up on the underclass who we’ve socially determined it’s ok to scorn and hate. If you think that’s not the case, contrast our social attitudes towards using a cellphone, which is equally dangerous to other drivers, and equally willful, and is so broadly accepted that people get upset about new laws to stop it. Clearly with some of these medical issues, it’s not because of the harm per se but because of the social villianization - it’s okay to hate drunk drivers or fat people, and we don’t have that radicalization 24/7 against these other (equally if not more dangerous) behaviors. https://journalistsresource.org/economics/cell-phones-and-driver-performance/ https://journalistsresource.org/economics/cell-phones-and-dr... Also, reminder that alcoholism is a medical problem too, not sure how that take gets started in the first place. But overweight and alcoholism are definitely villianized because of the perception that it’s “your fault” whereas not getting enough sleep last night is not your fault at all! It’s quite difficult to talk about some of these topics for a lot of people because “drunk driving bad”… but in a harms sense it’s no more harmful than grandpa getting behind the wheel and crossing the centerline because he’s 75 and not a good driver anymore. And both individuals do consciously make that choice. And if grandpa or a narcoleptic have a right to drive to work because that’s what our society requires of them… so does the alcoholic. It’s weird to give people a “drive while impaired” pass when the idea is supposedly about harm reduction - again, you’re just as dead if grandpa crosses the centerline as if a drunk driver did it.
- masklinn 3y ago
  > It's easy to find out if someone is driving as though they are impaired, less easy to find out if they actually are. Medical emergencies spring to mind as something that will be hard to distinguish. For the average medical emergency, everyone would probably be better off with the car stopping by the roadside: heart attack, stroke, confusion, … are not improved by hitting other cars, buildings, pedestrians. > How many people rushing to the hospital with a pregnant wife in the back will no longer make it before giving birth? I would say if this is anything more than a movie trope it would be solved better by fixing your medical system, and not having to drive dangerously and illegally in the first place. Planted into a tree is not a great way to give birth.
  - Aurornis 3y ago
    > For the average medical emergency, everyone would probably be better off with the car stopping by the roadside: heart attack, stroke, confusion, … are not improved by hitting other cars, buildings, pedestrians. Why are you assuming the person with the problem is driving? That’s not what anyone is talking about. The point was that someone driving a passenger to the hospital would be in a justifiable rush. > I would say if this is anything more than a movie trope it would be solved better by fixing your medical system, and not having to drive dangerously and illegally in the first place. Planted into a tree is not a great way to give birth. It’s not a movie trope, rushing sick people to the hospital is a real thing that happens. It’s not a problem with the medical system. It takes longer for an ambulance to drive all the way to your location first and then to drive to the hospital than it would for someone to put you in their car and leave for the hospital immediately in most cases. You’re taking the most bad-faith interpretations of what people are suggesting, but you’re really just setting up straw man arguments and missing the point.
    - masklinn 3y ago
      > Why are you assuming the person with the problem is driving? Because it's what the average "medical emergency" involving "driving as though impaired" is. > That’s not what anyone is talking about. The point was that someone driving a passenger to the hospital would be in a justifiable rush. No, the point was "medical emergency", and "driving as though impaired". > It’s not a movie trope, rushing sick people to the hospital is a real thing that happens. It absolutely is a movie trope, having to endanger everyone because you need to drive like a maniac due to a medical emergency is a rounding error occurrence in the real world. > It’s not a problem with the medical system. Of course it is, the fact that you entertain is as a genuine possibility very much speaks to a lack of pregnancy care and access to emergency services and medical care. > You’re taking the most bad-faith interpretations of what people are suggesting, but you’re really just setting up straw man arguments and missing the point. Medical emergencies at the wheel are anything but a strawman, it's a daily occurrence in the US. Even more so in the context of "driving as though they are impaired". If we're talking strawman, that is absolutely what "rushing to the hospital with a pregnant wife who otherwise won't make it" is, it's a nonsense movie scenario entirely made up to pull on heartstrings.
- hnbad 3y ago
  Either the American medical system is in even worse shape than I thought or you're far too credulous when it comes to Hollywood tropes. Labor rarely works like it does in the movies and unless you live in extremely remote places (in which case you should probably have a midwife on call) you should have ample time to drive to a hospital. Often the mere act of going somewhere else (i.e. leaving the house) can "reset" labor. If you're already in the actual process of giving birth, you definitely shouldn't be in a car going anywhere. The last thing you want to do with a pregnant person in labor is drive recklessly and endanger the lives of everyone involved including passengers of other vehicles and pedestrians. If you have a medical emergency, you should call an ambulance. You're not a trained emergency vehicle driver. You're stressed and potentially in shock. You're not safe to drive. If you drive in such a reckless way that you're indistinguishable from a drunk driver, you're not safe to drive and you're a danger to yourself and everyone else.
firebaze 3y ago
Laws of this kind always have a string of unintended consequences attached. Imagine if a robber, intent on making sure you can't flee with your car, douses you with a bottle of vodka.
- kombookcha 3y ago
  Surely this hypothetical is not actually any worse than the same robber clobbering you with said bottle to achieve the exact same outcome today?
  - iteria 3y ago
    Let's exchange robber with rapist or abuser. Someone who wants to make sure you stay and can't leave and needs you relatively healthy. Of course there are violent options, but allowing someone to restrict your movements by just splashing some alcohol on you is just too easy to trap someone
    - kombookcha 3y ago
      Now it's getting a bit overengineered. Both of those are already committing violent crimes and aren't gonna be squeamish about physically preventing you from entering a non alcohol-locked vehicle.
- hgomersall 3y ago
  The solution to this is actually fairly simple: allow an override, but if you get caught breaking the law having overridden it without a good excuse, have very harsh penalties. The same would work for automatic speed limiters.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    Drunk driving already has very harsh penalties. Excessive speeds tend to have very harsh penalties too depending on the state. There's absolutely no point to a limiting system (in these contexts) that has a user override. The people doing these things have already made the conscious choice to do them.
matsemann 3y ago
Driving is a privilege, not a right. I'm not particularly unhappy about getting certain drivers off the roads.
- Retr0id 3y ago
  Driving on public roads might be a privilege, but I don't think you can say the same about private roads.
  - ponector 3y ago
    On private road you can drive whatever vehicle you want. This law wouldn't limit you.
    - Retr0id 3y ago
      People with street-legal cars should still have the right to drive them on private roads if they want to. This law restricts that.
      - shortcake27 3y ago
        So your argument is that the right to drive a road-legal vehicle dangerously on private property is more important than the right to not get killed by a drunk driver on a public road?
        Retr0id 3y ago
        You already have the right to not get killed by a drunk driver on a public road.
        shortcake27 3y ago
        I think you’re attempting to play with words to skirt around the question, despite the fact you know exactly what I’m saying. But let’s phrase it a different way. Are you saying it’s more important for people to have the ability to drive road-legal cars dangerously on private property, than it is to prevent fatal accidents caused by drunk drivers?
causality0 3y ago
What's the acceptable ratio of lives saved to lives lost? Because this will kill at least a few people who are desperately trying to get to a hospital or flee a disaster zone.
- anonymous_sorry 3y ago
  Presumably 1:1 is the minimum acceptable. Whether the actual ratio is predictable or calculable is another matter.
  - zoky 3y ago
    Would you accept 1:1 for the number of innocent persons imprisoned to the number of guilty persons who go free? In other words, for every fairly executed person we can have up to one wrongly executed person, and that's totally fine? If not, why is 1:1 even remotely acceptable for this?
    - kawhah 3y ago
      > for every fairly executed person we can have up to one wrongly executed person, and that's totally fine? you are confusing two ratios. the number of fairly executed people and the number of guilty people who are acquitted are obviously totally different.
      - zoky 3y ago
        But that's the standard, isn't it? Better 10 guilty men go free than one man wrongly imprisoned? And since we're talking about lives saved versus lives lost, it seems appropriate to apply the same metric. So how many people would have to be actually guilty of murder and fairly executed to justify wrongfully killing a single innocent human being? Personally, I'd say that number is really high, possibly infinite. I'm not inherently opposed to the death penalty, but I can't think of any fair number of actual murderers I'd be willing to execute if it meant the death of somebody who truly didn't deserve it.
arthur_sav 3y ago
> car determines that you are driving like a drunk person, so shuts down 1. Surely algos don't produce false positives. You will be hostage to an obscure algorithm than can shutdown your car at any moment. 2. If it's possible to abuse this, it will be abused. This is another Trojan Horse under the guise of safety.
- tgv 3y ago
  But that doesn't mean it invades the driver's privacy. OTOH, perhaps we should not expect a right to privacy regarding our sobriety when getting in a car.
withinboredom 3y ago
I can think of a number of conditions where people appear to drive impaired, but aren't. They're probably running for their lives... or the lives of their passengers. Here's a good one (trying to outrun a pyroclastic flow, maybe NSFW, most people seen in this video do not live): https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/13ou6df/escaping_pyroclastic_flow_from_volcano_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/13ou6df/escaping_pyroc...
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  ...or driving down a shitty road with giant potholes. https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/5bcfy1/driving_sober_vs_drunk_in_michigan/ https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/5bcfy1/driving_sober...
- HPsquared 3y ago
  This is the biggest thing. This is the harm that will be caused. It will cause deaths, but indirectly.
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  Less dramatic but an example of false-positives with a system like this. My 2015 Ford has an automated "Driver Rest Suggested" feature with some kind of basic algorithm that detects the driving pattern of someone who's tired (supposedly). I assume it would do the same with an impaired driver? Anyway, at least a couple of times a month it goes off for some random reason. Right now I just hit "Ok" and it goes away. Thinking that it could now lead to forced immobility of the vehicle is horrifying to me. Every time I get in my car I would be thinking "am I going to get to where I'm going"? Telling someone you missed something as minor as a meeting because your car thought you were drunk is ridiculous. Although if this was widely mandated the response would be "Yeah, I hate when mine does that". What a future. Impaired driving is unacceptable but this functionality would either need to be calibrated such that you're ridiculously impaired (repeatedly swerving completely across the road) or it would lead to a lot of stranded motorists (and probably still would). In cold climates especially this could absolutely lead to death.
  - 3y ago
aifarts 3y ago
> Just I don’t know how possible it is, nor how reliably that would work When I drove a Smart over a tiny snowy incline without the ability to turn ABS off I realized what "city" in "city car" meant. I doubt this would work well in anything except city a road. Driving on snow, especially over the inclines of a mountain, would match my definition of "drunk driving"
HenryBemis 3y ago
Apart from "detecting whether you are drunk" I can think off a new bill (once majority of the cars will have that thing installed) that will give certain authorities the 'button' to use that kill-switch. So, your car is stolen, and a helicopter is following your car in a high-speed-chase that we see on TV/YT? No more! Now the relevant agencies will be able to kill you engine and you will slow down - to a halt.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
mcv 3y ago
Deciding it based on driving pattern is too late. Do they want to shut down the car while it's driving through traffic? Doing that would require an autopilot that takes over and steers the car to a safe location. If you want to do it before the driving starts, I guess every car needs to come equipped with a breathalyzer. Not to mention that false positives could leave someone stranded in a potentially dangerous situation with their primary transportation disabled.
- rtpg 3y ago
  Good points, I do admit I don’t know how this could work in practice. My conflictual feelings is just on how serious and real the danger is of people driving in a certain state, balanced against all the negatives mentioned.
  - mcv 3y ago
    I completely agree with that goal, but I think the only way to do that in a responsible manner is a breathalyzer test before you can start the engine.
macNchz 3y ago
I do think the term “kill switch” sort of prompts you to envision some kind of operations center with people watching you drive and a big red button they can use to instantly disable your car, whereas the reality is likely going to be much more mundane. I imagine this will be something that beeps at you a lot, and relies on various sensors whose performance degrades over time, such that mechanically-perfect ten year old cars will occasionally become unusable until someone skilled figures out which $5 sensor is sending erratic values.
rsync 3y ago
"In the hypothesis that it’s actually kind of easy to figure out if somebody is impaired ..." I am the (unfortunate) owner of a brand new Audi eTron which (unfortunately) comes standard with some form of lane assist. This "feature" is regularly nudging me (literally) onto steering trajectories I deliberately did not choose - sometimes dangerously so. These nudges represent judgements made by the software that are understandable from a primitive and one-dimensional view but shockingly bad from the viewpoint of the entire landscape around me as I am driving. On some occasions I truly believe I avoided serious injury or death by working against the feature[1]. We will learn these things. There will be blood. It could have been avoided. [1] Two lane road with no shoulders passing a bicyclist with the California mandated passing margin ... while the steering is fighting to bring me back to my lane and kill the biker.

by rtpg 3y ago

margalabargala 3y ago

It's easy to find out if someone is driving as though they are impaired, less easy to find out if they actually are. Medical emergencies spring to mind as something that will be hard to distinguish. How many people rushing to the hospital with a pregnant wife in the back will no longer make it before giving birth?

pinkgolem 3y ago
I mean.. is it not more helpful if those people wait on the side of the road for 10-15 minutes till an ambulance/helicopter is there? If they are driving like a drunk driver I would assume the same risks are included...
- sethammons 3y ago
  I have lived the majority of my life in Southern California and the fastest emergency personnel could get to my home is 25 minutes, speeding. I assume you are unfamiliar with rural living, a common shortsightedness I see on this forum.
  - pinkgolem 3y ago
    My city has a whopping 500 people, if it's something urgent... They send out an helicopter. Would be very surprised if there are places further away then 15 minutes from a helicopter where you can reach any sensibel healthcare infrastructure faster by car A women having early contractions, most likely would not qualify even for emergency lights.
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > If they are driving like a drunk driver This is the core problem: If we assume that the drunk driving protection is 100% accurate and there are never any false positives under any conditions, the bill seems more reasonable. But I’m struggling to understand why people on HN of all places are assuming this drunk driving protection will be absolutely perfect and never trigger unless absolutely justified. Anyone who works with technology doing fuzzy classification or detection tasks knows how impossible it is to get the accuracy being implied in this thread.
matsemann 3y ago
That "pregnant wife in backseat" argument is so stupid, and is always being used to excuse all kinds of dangerous driving. The amount of lives saved by someone speeding with a pregnant wife is minuscule compared to the amount of lives being saved by not making driving like a lunatic possible.
- mcny 3y ago
  I think this kill switch does not belong in the US. Firstly, I've seen people who have DWI get a special license to drive to work and to get groceries. We simply do not have the public transit infrastructure. Come back with this when we have decent coverage of public transit. Secondly, we don't have universal health care. You could end up with thousands in just ambulance expenses if you are out of network. If I am not imminently dying (how can I judge that?), we are driving ourselves. Thirdly, this likely makes cars more expensive. See first point. We can't do that without decent public transit coverage. Yes, we have a lot of people die on the roads in the US. No, the solution isn't as easy as adding a kill switch.
  - krisoft 3y ago
    > Firstly, I've seen people who have DWI get a special license to drive to work and to get groceries. Do they get a licence to drive while intoxicated? Or people with a history of driving while intoxicated are bared from general driving, but get a special licence so they can drive but only to work and to get groceries?
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      The latter.
      - krisoft 3y ago
        In that case how is this an argument against the type of kill switch described?
orwin 3y ago
If it's an emergency and you're far enough that this is an issue, waiting for the emergency vehicle is probably faster (they also have access to meds that will slow down contractions or make them less painful). (edit: I don't have a strong opinion on the original subject, but I think you're right. I just don't like your example, hence my comment)
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> How many people rushing to the hospital with a pregnant wife in the back will no longer make it before giving birth? What would be the problem with that? If you don't make it to the hospital before giving birth, you don't need to go to the hospital at all. The reason you might want to be in a hospital while in labor is in case something goes wrong that prevents you from successfully giving birth.
paulmd 3y ago
If someone is driving so sleepy or having such a medical crisis that they can’t keep the car on the road, they shouldn’t be driving even if they’re sober. The harm to others doesn’t go away just because it’s “medical”, you are still just as dead if grandpa falls asleep and crosses the centerline. And it is still a crime to do so - you can be arrested for driving too sleepy already. Much like CSAM, this is one where there not clear daylight between the advertised situation and other similar situations (why would you want to stop pedos but leave mass shooters able to communicate?) other than the targeted class being particularly villainized by society at large. People should really have the faith of their convictions and discuss this as a generalized thing, “what is the benefit of having killswitches in all our cars for impaired drivers” and not just pretend that it’s only alcoholics who are dangerous on the road. This will eventually be coming for anyone who displays dangerous driving even if it’s “medical” and should really be viewed in that context. I’m not saying that’s entirely a bad thing either. Maybe we’d all be safer if our cars spied on us 24/7. But people are generally repulsed at that idea because I’m not a filthy drunk driver, how dare you treat me like one. It was never about road safety at all, it was about getting one up on the underclass who we’ve socially determined it’s ok to scorn and hate. If you think that’s not the case, contrast our social attitudes towards using a cellphone, which is equally dangerous to other drivers, and equally willful, and is so broadly accepted that people get upset about new laws to stop it. Clearly with some of these medical issues, it’s not because of the harm per se but because of the social villianization - it’s okay to hate drunk drivers or fat people, and we don’t have that radicalization 24/7 against these other (equally if not more dangerous) behaviors. https://journalistsresource.org/economics/cell-phones-and-driver-performance/ https://journalistsresource.org/economics/cell-phones-and-dr... Also, reminder that alcoholism is a medical problem too, not sure how that take gets started in the first place. But overweight and alcoholism are definitely villianized because of the perception that it’s “your fault” whereas not getting enough sleep last night is not your fault at all! It’s quite difficult to talk about some of these topics for a lot of people because “drunk driving bad”… but in a harms sense it’s no more harmful than grandpa getting behind the wheel and crossing the centerline because he’s 75 and not a good driver anymore. And both individuals do consciously make that choice. And if grandpa or a narcoleptic have a right to drive to work because that’s what our society requires of them… so does the alcoholic. It’s weird to give people a “drive while impaired” pass when the idea is supposedly about harm reduction - again, you’re just as dead if grandpa crosses the centerline as if a drunk driver did it.
masklinn 3y ago
> It's easy to find out if someone is driving as though they are impaired, less easy to find out if they actually are. Medical emergencies spring to mind as something that will be hard to distinguish. For the average medical emergency, everyone would probably be better off with the car stopping by the roadside: heart attack, stroke, confusion, … are not improved by hitting other cars, buildings, pedestrians. > How many people rushing to the hospital with a pregnant wife in the back will no longer make it before giving birth? I would say if this is anything more than a movie trope it would be solved better by fixing your medical system, and not having to drive dangerously and illegally in the first place. Planted into a tree is not a great way to give birth.
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > For the average medical emergency, everyone would probably be better off with the car stopping by the roadside: heart attack, stroke, confusion, … are not improved by hitting other cars, buildings, pedestrians. Why are you assuming the person with the problem is driving? That’s not what anyone is talking about. The point was that someone driving a passenger to the hospital would be in a justifiable rush. > I would say if this is anything more than a movie trope it would be solved better by fixing your medical system, and not having to drive dangerously and illegally in the first place. Planted into a tree is not a great way to give birth. It’s not a movie trope, rushing sick people to the hospital is a real thing that happens. It’s not a problem with the medical system. It takes longer for an ambulance to drive all the way to your location first and then to drive to the hospital than it would for someone to put you in their car and leave for the hospital immediately in most cases. You’re taking the most bad-faith interpretations of what people are suggesting, but you’re really just setting up straw man arguments and missing the point.
  - masklinn 3y ago
    > Why are you assuming the person with the problem is driving? Because it's what the average "medical emergency" involving "driving as though impaired" is. > That’s not what anyone is talking about. The point was that someone driving a passenger to the hospital would be in a justifiable rush. No, the point was "medical emergency", and "driving as though impaired". > It’s not a movie trope, rushing sick people to the hospital is a real thing that happens. It absolutely is a movie trope, having to endanger everyone because you need to drive like a maniac due to a medical emergency is a rounding error occurrence in the real world. > It’s not a problem with the medical system. Of course it is, the fact that you entertain is as a genuine possibility very much speaks to a lack of pregnancy care and access to emergency services and medical care. > You’re taking the most bad-faith interpretations of what people are suggesting, but you’re really just setting up straw man arguments and missing the point. Medical emergencies at the wheel are anything but a strawman, it's a daily occurrence in the US. Even more so in the context of "driving as though they are impaired". If we're talking strawman, that is absolutely what "rushing to the hospital with a pregnant wife who otherwise won't make it" is, it's a nonsense movie scenario entirely made up to pull on heartstrings.
hnbad 3y ago
Either the American medical system is in even worse shape than I thought or you're far too credulous when it comes to Hollywood tropes. Labor rarely works like it does in the movies and unless you live in extremely remote places (in which case you should probably have a midwife on call) you should have ample time to drive to a hospital. Often the mere act of going somewhere else (i.e. leaving the house) can "reset" labor. If you're already in the actual process of giving birth, you definitely shouldn't be in a car going anywhere. The last thing you want to do with a pregnant person in labor is drive recklessly and endanger the lives of everyone involved including passengers of other vehicles and pedestrians. If you have a medical emergency, you should call an ambulance. You're not a trained emergency vehicle driver. You're stressed and potentially in shock. You're not safe to drive. If you drive in such a reckless way that you're indistinguishable from a drunk driver, you're not safe to drive and you're a danger to yourself and everyone else.

firebaze 3y ago

Laws of this kind always have a string of unintended consequences attached. Imagine if a robber, intent on making sure you can't flee with your car, douses you with a bottle of vodka.

kombookcha 3y ago
Surely this hypothetical is not actually any worse than the same robber clobbering you with said bottle to achieve the exact same outcome today?
- iteria 3y ago
  Let's exchange robber with rapist or abuser. Someone who wants to make sure you stay and can't leave and needs you relatively healthy. Of course there are violent options, but allowing someone to restrict your movements by just splashing some alcohol on you is just too easy to trap someone
  - kombookcha 3y ago
    Now it's getting a bit overengineered. Both of those are already committing violent crimes and aren't gonna be squeamish about physically preventing you from entering a non alcohol-locked vehicle.
hgomersall 3y ago
The solution to this is actually fairly simple: allow an override, but if you get caught breaking the law having overridden it without a good excuse, have very harsh penalties. The same would work for automatic speed limiters.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Drunk driving already has very harsh penalties. Excessive speeds tend to have very harsh penalties too depending on the state. There's absolutely no point to a limiting system (in these contexts) that has a user override. The people doing these things have already made the conscious choice to do them.

matsemann 3y ago

Driving is a privilege, not a right. I'm not particularly unhappy about getting certain drivers off the roads.

Retr0id 3y ago
Driving on public roads might be a privilege, but I don't think you can say the same about private roads.
- ponector 3y ago
  On private road you can drive whatever vehicle you want. This law wouldn't limit you.
  - Retr0id 3y ago
    People with street-legal cars should still have the right to drive them on private roads if they want to. This law restricts that.
    - shortcake27 3y ago
      So your argument is that the right to drive a road-legal vehicle dangerously on private property is more important than the right to not get killed by a drunk driver on a public road?
      - Retr0id 3y ago
        You already have the right to not get killed by a drunk driver on a public road.
        shortcake27 3y ago
        I think you’re attempting to play with words to skirt around the question, despite the fact you know exactly what I’m saying. But let’s phrase it a different way. Are you saying it’s more important for people to have the ability to drive road-legal cars dangerously on private property, than it is to prevent fatal accidents caused by drunk drivers?

causality0 3y ago

What's the acceptable ratio of lives saved to lives lost? Because this will kill at least a few people who are desperately trying to get to a hospital or flee a disaster zone.

anonymous_sorry 3y ago
Presumably 1:1 is the minimum acceptable. Whether the actual ratio is predictable or calculable is another matter.
- zoky 3y ago
  Would you accept 1:1 for the number of innocent persons imprisoned to the number of guilty persons who go free? In other words, for every fairly executed person we can have up to one wrongly executed person, and that's totally fine? If not, why is 1:1 even remotely acceptable for this?
  - kawhah 3y ago
    > for every fairly executed person we can have up to one wrongly executed person, and that's totally fine? you are confusing two ratios. the number of fairly executed people and the number of guilty people who are acquitted are obviously totally different.
    - zoky 3y ago
      But that's the standard, isn't it? Better 10 guilty men go free than one man wrongly imprisoned? And since we're talking about lives saved versus lives lost, it seems appropriate to apply the same metric. So how many people would have to be actually guilty of murder and fairly executed to justify wrongfully killing a single innocent human being? Personally, I'd say that number is really high, possibly infinite. I'm not inherently opposed to the death penalty, but I can't think of any fair number of actual murderers I'd be willing to execute if it meant the death of somebody who truly didn't deserve it.

arthur_sav 3y ago

> car determines that you are driving like a drunk person, so shuts down 1. Surely algos don't produce false positives. You will be hostage to an obscure algorithm than can shutdown your car at any moment. 2. If it's possible to abuse this, it will be abused. This is another Trojan Horse under the guise of safety.

tgv 3y ago
But that doesn't mean it invades the driver's privacy. OTOH, perhaps we should not expect a right to privacy regarding our sobriety when getting in a car.

withinboredom 3y ago

I can think of a number of conditions where people appear to drive impaired, but aren't. They're probably running for their lives... or the lives of their passengers. Here's a good one (trying to outrun a pyroclastic flow, maybe NSFW, most people seen in this video do not live): https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/13ou6df/escaping_pyroclastic_flow_from_volcano_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/13ou6df/escaping_pyroc...

ajsnigrutin 3y ago
...or driving down a shitty road with giant potholes. https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/5bcfy1/driving_sober_vs_drunk_in_michigan/ https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/5bcfy1/driving_sober...
HPsquared 3y ago
This is the biggest thing. This is the harm that will be caused. It will cause deaths, but indirectly.
kkielhofner 3y ago
Less dramatic but an example of false-positives with a system like this. My 2015 Ford has an automated "Driver Rest Suggested" feature with some kind of basic algorithm that detects the driving pattern of someone who's tired (supposedly). I assume it would do the same with an impaired driver? Anyway, at least a couple of times a month it goes off for some random reason. Right now I just hit "Ok" and it goes away. Thinking that it could now lead to forced immobility of the vehicle is horrifying to me. Every time I get in my car I would be thinking "am I going to get to where I'm going"? Telling someone you missed something as minor as a meeting because your car thought you were drunk is ridiculous. Although if this was widely mandated the response would be "Yeah, I hate when mine does that". What a future. Impaired driving is unacceptable but this functionality would either need to be calibrated such that you're ridiculously impaired (repeatedly swerving completely across the road) or it would lead to a lot of stranded motorists (and probably still would). In cold climates especially this could absolutely lead to death.
- 3y ago

aifarts 3y ago

> Just I don’t know how possible it is, nor how reliably that would work When I drove a Smart over a tiny snowy incline without the ability to turn ABS off I realized what "city" in "city car" meant. I doubt this would work well in anything except city a road. Driving on snow, especially over the inclines of a mountain, would match my definition of "drunk driving"

HenryBemis 3y ago

Apart from "detecting whether you are drunk" I can think off a new bill (once majority of the cars will have that thing installed) that will give certain authorities the 'button' to use that kill-switch. So, your car is stolen, and a helicopter is following your car in a high-speed-chase that we see on TV/YT? No more! Now the relevant agencies will be able to kill you engine and you will slow down - to a halt.

deleted 3y ago
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mcv 3y ago

Deciding it based on driving pattern is too late. Do they want to shut down the car while it's driving through traffic? Doing that would require an autopilot that takes over and steers the car to a safe location. If you want to do it before the driving starts, I guess every car needs to come equipped with a breathalyzer. Not to mention that false positives could leave someone stranded in a potentially dangerous situation with their primary transportation disabled.

rtpg 3y ago
Good points, I do admit I don’t know how this could work in practice. My conflictual feelings is just on how serious and real the danger is of people driving in a certain state, balanced against all the negatives mentioned.
- mcv 3y ago
  I completely agree with that goal, but I think the only way to do that in a responsible manner is a breathalyzer test before you can start the engine.

macNchz 3y ago

I do think the term “kill switch” sort of prompts you to envision some kind of operations center with people watching you drive and a big red button they can use to instantly disable your car, whereas the reality is likely going to be much more mundane. I imagine this will be something that beeps at you a lot, and relies on various sensors whose performance degrades over time, such that mechanically-perfect ten year old cars will occasionally become unusable until someone skilled figures out which $5 sensor is sending erratic values.

rsync 3y ago

"In the hypothesis that it’s actually kind of easy to figure out if somebody is impaired ..." I am the (unfortunate) owner of a brand new Audi eTron which (unfortunately) comes standard with some form of lane assist. This "feature" is regularly nudging me (literally) onto steering trajectories I deliberately did not choose - sometimes dangerously so. These nudges represent judgements made by the software that are understandable from a primitive and one-dimensional view but shockingly bad from the viewpoint of the entire landscape around me as I am driving. On some occasions I truly believe I avoided serious injury or death by working against the feature[1]. We will learn these things. There will be blood. It could have been avoided. [1] Two lane road with no shoulders passing a bicyclist with the California mandated passing margin ... while the steering is fighting to bring me back to my lane and kill the biker.