Gadgetory

we're at San Francisco auto repair center where they are one of the few licensed installers and maintained errs of the current state of the art of alcohol detection ignition interlocks okay here's today's technology here's the smart start system installed in this vehicle this is sort of a hand set of a head unit with a display and a place where you blow in it connects through this big ol coil cord to a logger box a brain box basically which is up under the dash here's how it works I turn the key to on because I want to go drive somewhere of course the system has to okay them and you just see it initializes for a moment it says wait now it says below here I go it's analyzing me now and I got a pass now I can start the car it gives you 2 minutes and counts down for you to do that I had to blow and then when it gave me a tone signal I had to make a humming sound while still blowing now why is that so that you haven't hooked up a balloon or a tank of air to this thing you got to do something that basically only a human can do as I drive it's gonna keep prompting me for random retests there is a vision in the future of having alcohol detection in every vehicle from new it's part of something called dad's the driver alcohol detection system for safety partly backed by the federal government now for alcohol detection to be in every car and be acceptable to the car buying public it has to meet three criteria as I see it first of all it's got to be nearly imperceptible most of us would never do this every time we drive no matter what the safety benefits for society second of all it's got to work quickly this is a bit of a timely process and third it has to be foolproof but it also has to have a little leeway for real-world living one envision technology is a touch pad on the steering wheel perhaps that shines infrared light on the surface of your skin reflecting from just deep enough to show blood-alcohol concentration in your body another technology is breath based like we've seen today but not with the device you blow into rather the car would automatically sample the area around the driver in the car testing for exhaled indicators of alcohol impairment now those two technologies as amazing as they seem are actually being demonstrated right now in the labs they are real the bigger hurdles come in three other areas first preventing the passenger or another person from sitting in for a drunk driver to start the car facial-recognition tech could help their second calibrating whatever technology is used to allow someone with let's say a point oh seven to drive but not someone with 0.08 that is giving tacit consent to drive after some degree of drinking quite different from the sort of don't drink and drive mantra that we operate under today and third another issue will be the confluence of what dad's technologies learns and the automotive black boxes that are soon to be required in every car under federal regulation will the readings from the alcohol testing system be stored in the black box and if so for how long and who can see that our partners at State Farm are encouraged about what could be a potential breakthrough in drunk driving technology why something like that whatever technology is used and they point to a frustrating number that makes it worth pursuing some ten thousand people every year dying in drunk driving accidents in the u.s. that numbers been coming down but not much below that level the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety thinks 7,000 of those deaths could be prevented by a technology like dad's once it propagates in the market