A comprehensive approach to prevent drunk driving

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A comprehensive approach to prevent drunk driving (5/30/05)

Way back when I was thinking about the ETS I had another idea that used an "ambient alcohol breathalyzer" as a kill switch on automobiles. Current breathalyzers require a strong blow into a tube whereas this one would sit near the steering wheel looking for even a hint of alcohol in the air from the driver. The threshold, of course, would be a topic of discussion as people on cold meds need to drive (whether they should be is a debate for another day) but drunks shouldn't. It would also be tricky to have these mandated on all cars. I'm not the only person thinking of these things though: Dennis Bellehumeur filed a patent application for a "SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PREVENTING THE OPERATION OF A MOTOR VEHICLE BY A PERSON WHO IS INTOXICATED" which uses galvanic skin sensors to do the job.

Now here is the rub: what if it is winter and a person is wearing gloves? Will glove wearing while driving be banned? Could a drunk have another person start their car and then drive off? My idea has holes too, the least of which is a person driving with an open window, and so it seems like the solution is not only to improve these methods but to design and use a system that uses a few of them in concert with other sensors to figure out what it should be reading. There should be a sensor on the window to tell the system to ignore the breathalyzer results if the window is open, and an IR sensor to tell the system to ignore the galvanics if a person is wearing gloves. What it moves to next is anybody's guess, maybe a cognition challenge, but at the least it would allow us to deploy a system that would surely save lives.