I mean, I'm all for anything within reason than can prevent DUI, but in my travels, cell phone use is a much, much more pervasive problem that is only poised to get worse. It makes me concerned it's flying under the radar.
I'm not attempting to straw man or anything, but curious if others feel the same way.
From the article, it seems the type of systems that are being proposed would also help with this issue.
The general idea is that the vehicle will monitor the driver’s performance to determine if the driver is impaired or not. It seems fairly reasonable. We have lane assist “Autopilot” type systems that are relatively close as it is. Basically the computer would see the driver is not doing similar inputs as what it determines is necessary and would flag the driver as impaired no matter what is causing that impairment.
I would guess lane swerving and late braking from cell phone use would be easy to detect.
Maybe a system that detects erratic driving, regardless of the cause -- sleep/drowsiness, alcohol, phone use, shaving, makeup, book reading (I have seen this!) -- can inform the driver to be more careful. That seems to strike a balance between safety and privacy.
Won't work on interstates but if they are crossing solid white lines like bicycle lanes on modern roads they they are either drunk, high, or starring at their smartphone.
Some people seem to even purposely straddle the bicycle lane line as some kind of subconscious auto-guidance while using their smartphone while driving which should be a go-immediately-to-jail offense before they murder someone.
Do we have existing tech that can disable cellphones? I suppose the driver’s seat could be wrapped in a faraday cage. Perhaps drivers could request an exception, with tougher penalties for exempted drivers who get busted using a handheld device while driving.
> cameras make sure a driver is watching the road, and they look for signs of drowsiness, loss of consciousness or impairment.
> If signs are spotted, the cars will warn the driver, and if the behavior persists, the car would turn on its hazard lights, slow down and pull to the side of the road.
What could possibly go wrong in the middle of the night on an under construction highway with barriers on both sides and no shoulder for miles?
If that sounds contrived, you've never experienced the joys of PennDOT.
Mandating something like an interlock would work. But false positives would be absolutely infuriating and possibly life threatening. Imagine having to call the police or similar to breathalyze or do a blood draw to then unlock your car. Just ask people trying to get out from under DUI convictions how unreliable those devices are.
If they want to have an effect on mortality rates, they would better make food producers figure out a way to get people ingesting less sugar.
American children are actually getting cirrhosis! It's the single greatest health crisis of our age, no exaggeration. Over half of Americans have symptoms of Metabolic Syndrome, what they used to call "fatty liver disease", a precursor to cirrhosis and numerous other ills.
Now that we know saturated fat is not only totally harmless, but important to health, maybe stop promoting low-fat diets, and dis-incentivize advertising "low-fat" and "non-fat" food, which is typically laced with sugar instead. And, maybe make promoting sugar without fiber to minors a felony?
I would like to know if current advanced safety tech such as lane centering and collision avoidance significantly cuts down on highway deaths due to driving impairment? Since these technologies are already starting to become standard, once they get more reliable would that itself make accidents plummet?
I'm not talking about full self driving, but just the currently available assistance technologies that work 95% of the time (and if they improve to work 99.9999% of the time).
Interesting to me that the comments here are so negative, but on anything with self driving cars everyone wants it now to prevent deaths. If DUIs are the #1 source of car deaths (per the article), why wouldn’t we want that removed?
Norms - people expressing approval / disapproval, imposing consequences and remedies similar to law, but not in a court, and not with assurances of due process, equal protection.
Law - Regulates behavior using courts, process and judgement, and can impose remedies, costs, and loss of freedom, consequenses.
Neither norms or law actually prevent people from doing things. They are both about accounting for things people have done. Notably the more resources one has, greater means and popularity generally mean lower costs and more moderate consequences.
Physics - The rules of the world do prevent actions! If it's too heavy you can't lift it, etc... The better one understand the world, the more agency one has. Access to technology also contributes to this agency.
Money - If you can't afford it, you are regulated. The more money one has, the more agency one has, generally.
What is being done here is to regulate with real teeth, preventing actions, without actually making laws and going through courts. Policy becomes law in other words, and many people oppose that because it represents a direct attack on their agency, freedom and it's very difficult to hold the people responsible accountable.
All Congress needs to do is weave in a little immunity and suddenly very large numbers of people experience regulation they may find expensive or undesirable and have very little they can do about it.
For me personally, it's another 80/20 problem. We've gotten our 80% result for 20% the effort/cost and now we're into the 80% of the effort/cost for 20% of the gain territory. At least with our current level of technology.
Meanwhile, I think there are other causes that haven't hit that inversion yet. 88,000 people die from diabetes each year. If we've got money that we're willing to splash on preventing deaths, why not take the easy win and have the government pay for everyone's insulin? There's no risk to privacy, no dubious "will this prevent me getting to work when I'm sober" questions, and no questions about efficacy.
If the goal is to prevent death, this seems like one of the most dubious methods of getting there. There are 17 million new cars sold in the US per year. If we're conservative on pricing and say it costs $10/car to add this, that's $170,000,000/year, or roughly $17,000 per prevented death. $17,000 a lot. That's health insurance premiums for like 3 families for a year. That's nearly a 5 year supply of the most expensive insulin on the market. That's enough to send someone to rehab.
Obligatory reminder that toy drones have killed a grand total of zero people but come with geo zones mandated by law that they will refuse to fly into. Meanwhile, you can get into your car and accelerate to 120 mph on city streets. Most of them have about 5x the engine power they could ever need and are actively marketed by their ability to speed.
Time for the cars to just drive themselves so we can be free to read a book, watch a movie, even have a beer etc. Instead of stressing out trying to drive with all this control. It would give an amazing amount of useful time back to our lives. I used to hang out at work for hours while totally tired just because I was dreading that horrible rush-hour drive home.
I really hate driving now. 5km/h over the limit is an insta-fine in some areas, where the entire road is monitored. When I still drove I used to watch the speedo more than the road sometimes which can't be the intention. And now the car needs to validate my state of awareness? So I have to focus on looking awake and perky as well.
I really can't wait for self driving cars. Luckily right now where I live I don't need or own one. I hope I never will need to own a car again :)
Ps I never drink and drive but this method will probably cause false positives and cause distractions. It's just time to take this full circle IMO. Computers aren't perfect at driving but neither are people.
> Abuelsamid said breathalyzers aren't a practical solution because many people would object to being forced to blow into a tube every time they get into the car.
Also those are super easy to defeat. People who have them usually just get someone else to blow in it or just blow into a bottle and then squeeze the bottle into the tube.
people have defeated driver awareness systems with flat-printed pictures of their face.
I don't know if defeat-hardness is a particularly good metric for these kind of systems. Very few systems on a modern automobile haven't been defeated in some way/shape/form.
I think it's more valuable to consider the convenience or life-altering-aspect of the consideration -- few people mind nor even notice their photo being taken, forcing folks to breath into a breathalyzer changes their activities and behavior ; their routine is now disrupted, that's a hard sell.
( I hate additional surveillance options, espescially given the idea of the 'always connected automobile'; it's a system that is prime for abuse by authorities. My consideration of these features in no way implies that i'm happy about either implementation. )
That actually makes me think about how smart we want our cars. I know there's a subset of people that strongly dislike smart TVs for roughly the same reasons.
this is a terrible idea. I want a car not my own personal nanny. Drink driving is a problem but we have to draw a line somewhere. What next? Will the car monitor music that might make us drive too fast? Will it shut off if we are not concentrating enough on the road? How many more stupid anti driver legislation can lawmakers come up with.
DUI of alcohol or mobile phones is a public heath hazard. A regulation mandating car manufacturers to throttle the speed and acceleration if the vehicle swerves or cross solid white lines can go a long way in saving innocent lives.
On the other hand, the only times I've ever swerved was to avoid something in the road. And if you've ever driven in icy conditions—it's not ideal but it happens—any kind of automatic correction is dangerous. There are also plenty of circumstances where it's okay to cross solid white lines.
So the devil is in the implementation details. How sensitive is it? How does it determine the difference between a driver who's avoiding an emergency versus about to cause one? What does it do when it thinks something is wrong?
Could there be a good version that informs unsafe drivers that they're not okay? Sure. There could also be a lot of bad versions.
We've moved into a definite era of attempting control through technology, and what defines the "era" is the level of aggression and overt strong arming of responsibility onto companies.
The very highly undesirable part is this will all likely end up working a lot like banking rules do. The companies set policy and enforce it technically, nicely circumventing many limits associated with government and law.
Lessig: CODE
Here it comes! CODE and tech as law.
I do not see this ending well at all, and it's not going to be pleasant.
Edit: Also, "drunk driving" is the "save the children" type blanket cover argument for many other reasons behind this initiative.
Fixing drunk driving is NOT an automotive technology problem. It’s an urban design problem. Fixing Americas idiotic zoning laws will do more than any technological solution. It’s hard to fathom how much space we’ve given up to our obscene level of car dependence. The first city in America that converts a considerable portion of their urban core into a car free zone will net a higher influx of talented workers than any Amazon HQ2…
This is a terrible idea. There's a reason existing interlock systems don't shut off your car. We have a silicon shortage that is affecting availability of cars and congress wants to require more silicon in cars?
It's stuff like this that's been happening with cars over the years that makes me deliberately continue to drive older cars exclusively. I wouldn't buy a brand new car if I were a billionaire.
[+] [-] silisili|4 years ago|reply
I'm not attempting to straw man or anything, but curious if others feel the same way.
[+] [-] bronco21016|4 years ago|reply
The general idea is that the vehicle will monitor the driver’s performance to determine if the driver is impaired or not. It seems fairly reasonable. We have lane assist “Autopilot” type systems that are relatively close as it is. Basically the computer would see the driver is not doing similar inputs as what it determines is necessary and would flag the driver as impaired no matter what is causing that impairment.
I would guess lane swerving and late braking from cell phone use would be easy to detect.
[+] [-] echelon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ck2|4 years ago|reply
Some people seem to even purposely straddle the bicycle lane line as some kind of subconscious auto-guidance while using their smartphone while driving which should be a go-immediately-to-jail offense before they murder someone.
[+] [-] jdavis703|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rob_c|4 years ago|reply
Looking forward to things like machine assisted breaking as default as the tech matures to help avoid crashes.
[+] [-] ryantgtg|4 years ago|reply
Additionally, “pervasive use” is not a measurement of damage.
[+] [-] hirundo|4 years ago|reply
According to this other current HN story, this mandate aligns well with carmakers' plans: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29182115
[+] [-] Igelau|4 years ago|reply
> If signs are spotted, the cars will warn the driver, and if the behavior persists, the car would turn on its hazard lights, slow down and pull to the side of the road.
What could possibly go wrong in the middle of the night on an under construction highway with barriers on both sides and no shoulder for miles?
If that sounds contrived, you've never experienced the joys of PennDOT.
[+] [-] vrc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ncmncm|4 years ago|reply
American children are actually getting cirrhosis! It's the single greatest health crisis of our age, no exaggeration. Over half of Americans have symptoms of Metabolic Syndrome, what they used to call "fatty liver disease", a precursor to cirrhosis and numerous other ills.
Now that we know saturated fat is not only totally harmless, but important to health, maybe stop promoting low-fat diets, and dis-incentivize advertising "low-fat" and "non-fat" food, which is typically laced with sugar instead. And, maybe make promoting sugar without fiber to minors a felony?
[+] [-] loeg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] derekp7|4 years ago|reply
I'm not talking about full self driving, but just the currently available assistance technologies that work 95% of the time (and if they improve to work 99.9999% of the time).
[+] [-] azinman2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddingus|4 years ago|reply
Regulation of humans happens via these forces:
Norms - people expressing approval / disapproval, imposing consequences and remedies similar to law, but not in a court, and not with assurances of due process, equal protection.
Law - Regulates behavior using courts, process and judgement, and can impose remedies, costs, and loss of freedom, consequenses.
Neither norms or law actually prevent people from doing things. They are both about accounting for things people have done. Notably the more resources one has, greater means and popularity generally mean lower costs and more moderate consequences.
Physics - The rules of the world do prevent actions! If it's too heavy you can't lift it, etc... The better one understand the world, the more agency one has. Access to technology also contributes to this agency.
Money - If you can't afford it, you are regulated. The more money one has, the more agency one has, generally.
What is being done here is to regulate with real teeth, preventing actions, without actually making laws and going through courts. Policy becomes law in other words, and many people oppose that because it represents a direct attack on their agency, freedom and it's very difficult to hold the people responsible accountable.
All Congress needs to do is weave in a little immunity and suddenly very large numbers of people experience regulation they may find expensive or undesirable and have very little they can do about it.
[+] [-] curryst|4 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, I think there are other causes that haven't hit that inversion yet. 88,000 people die from diabetes each year. If we've got money that we're willing to splash on preventing deaths, why not take the easy win and have the government pay for everyone's insulin? There's no risk to privacy, no dubious "will this prevent me getting to work when I'm sober" questions, and no questions about efficacy.
If the goal is to prevent death, this seems like one of the most dubious methods of getting there. There are 17 million new cars sold in the US per year. If we're conservative on pricing and say it costs $10/car to add this, that's $170,000,000/year, or roughly $17,000 per prevented death. $17,000 a lot. That's health insurance premiums for like 3 families for a year. That's nearly a 5 year supply of the most expensive insulin on the market. That's enough to send someone to rehab.
[+] [-] drewcoo|4 years ago|reply
I'd wager that nearly 100% of them involve humans driving.
Note that neither claim actually shows cause.
[+] [-] FridayoLeary|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stefan_|4 years ago|reply
There is a ton of low hanging fruit in cars.
[+] [-] jim-jim-jim|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GekkePrutser|4 years ago|reply
I really hate driving now. 5km/h over the limit is an insta-fine in some areas, where the entire road is monitored. When I still drove I used to watch the speedo more than the road sometimes which can't be the intention. And now the car needs to validate my state of awareness? So I have to focus on looking awake and perky as well.
I really can't wait for self driving cars. Luckily right now where I live I don't need or own one. I hope I never will need to own a car again :)
Ps I never drink and drive but this method will probably cause false positives and cause distractions. It's just time to take this full circle IMO. Computers aren't perfect at driving but neither are people.
[+] [-] rzz3|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedberg|4 years ago|reply
Also those are super easy to defeat. People who have them usually just get someone else to blow in it or just blow into a bottle and then squeeze the bottle into the tube.
[+] [-] serf|4 years ago|reply
people have defeated driver awareness systems with flat-printed pictures of their face.
I don't know if defeat-hardness is a particularly good metric for these kind of systems. Very few systems on a modern automobile haven't been defeated in some way/shape/form.
I think it's more valuable to consider the convenience or life-altering-aspect of the consideration -- few people mind nor even notice their photo being taken, forcing folks to breath into a breathalyzer changes their activities and behavior ; their routine is now disrupted, that's a hard sell.
( I hate additional surveillance options, espescially given the idea of the 'always connected automobile'; it's a system that is prime for abuse by authorities. My consideration of these features in no way implies that i'm happy about either implementation. )
[+] [-] stevenalowe|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ddingus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teeray|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsumnia|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FridayoLeary|4 years ago|reply
This madness must be stopped.
[+] [-] wanderingmind|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coffeefirst|4 years ago|reply
On the other hand, the only times I've ever swerved was to avoid something in the road. And if you've ever driven in icy conditions—it's not ideal but it happens—any kind of automatic correction is dangerous. There are also plenty of circumstances where it's okay to cross solid white lines.
So the devil is in the implementation details. How sensitive is it? How does it determine the difference between a driver who's avoiding an emergency versus about to cause one? What does it do when it thinks something is wrong?
Could there be a good version that informs unsafe drivers that they're not okay? Sure. There could also be a lot of bad versions.
[+] [-] ddingus|4 years ago|reply
We've moved into a definite era of attempting control through technology, and what defines the "era" is the level of aggression and overt strong arming of responsibility onto companies.
The very highly undesirable part is this will all likely end up working a lot like banking rules do. The companies set policy and enforce it technically, nicely circumventing many limits associated with government and law.
Lessig: CODE
Here it comes! CODE and tech as law.
I do not see this ending well at all, and it's not going to be pleasant.
Edit: Also, "drunk driving" is the "save the children" type blanket cover argument for many other reasons behind this initiative.
[+] [-] akersten|4 years ago|reply
Either both mandates make sense or neither does. I think you can probably tell which camp I'm in.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] squidhunter|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swayvil|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] betwixthewires|4 years ago|reply
It's stuff like this that's been happening with cars over the years that makes me deliberately continue to drive older cars exclusively. I wouldn't buy a brand new car if I were a billionaire.