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Alls I know is I don't want to have to give my Honda a blow job every time I have to run to the post office.
I don't generally get political on this site, but I honestly never understood why libertarians oppose driving locks that keep your car from turning on if your booze breath is too high. Seems to me that protects you more than anybody, but I guess the idea is that you should never need protection, and the government shouldn't have a hand in it if you do.
And that's why I'm happy about the Breathometer, because it leaves that decision in your hands...if you can afford a smartphone to plug it into (I remain stubbornly behind the times, but if I were not, this would please me more). Now your iPhone will tell you if you should or should not drive, and given how people trust their phones nowadays, this is a positive step above dubious guesswork. (Though if they're inaccurate, God help the lawsuits.)
That something this obvious needs to be funded via Indiegogo is insane, but like the Veronica Mars movie, the proposal met its goal in less than a day.
I just hope the final project is more on point than the video above, which leaves one of its spokespeople flapping his gums without sound at the end of it. (Watch that video after the jump.)
Driverless cars, of course, will render all of this irrelevant, in our lifetimes with any luck.
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"Seems to me that protects you more than anybody"
Speaking from totally anecdotal evidence, the majority of life-threatening or fatal drunk driving accidents in my immediate area in the last several years have involved someone other than the drunk driver receiving the most serious injuries. As for the accidents closest to where I live, the drunk drivers always walked away with minor if any injury, while the victims have ranged from scares (and a totaled car) to death, with all manner of serious injuries in between (including full paralysis.)
Thinking about people that I personally know that have been involved in drunk driving accidents, I can think of only one (in my entire life) that died while they were driving drunk, but can think of multiple that died because they were hit by a drunk driver.
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Not sure if this point has already been made on the car lock idea point, but. . .
I don't drink. I don't really want to have my car analyze my breath when I want to drive because other people DO drink.
I may be misunderstanding the finer points of the conversation, but that's my kneejerk reaction.
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@rabidronnie It's about right. People live in fear. Fear will give others rights over you you'd never dreamed possible before.
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Speaking as someone who leans libertarian when it comes to issues of legality, the driving lock thing depends on whether we're talking mandated technology or optional technology. If it's mandated technology, then, yeah, they should oppose it, and so do I. Not everyone needs or wants it. Why would I need it, for example? I know better than to drive drunk, and it represents a new technology that everyone who buys a car would then have to pay for whether they would need to use it or not.
If it's optional, OK. If someone feels that they would need it, let them have the option to buy it. In that case, no skin off my back. That's maximal personal freedom which is what I thought libertarians were all about.
But since I haven't heard which way it's being presented - option or mandate. I can't go further than that.
@ketsuko Interlocks, as it stands now, are only being put in place as penalty for drunk driving, to keep the offenders (usually repeated offenders) honest in their post-suspension period, usually six months following reinstatement. If you get locked out too many times (and the interlock gives you three tries to get a clean sample through), your suspension is extended. There has been no talk whatsoever of mandating them, at least not from any credible and politically-empowered source.
@VindicaSean @ketsuko How do you keep a drunk from simply getting around them by getting a sober sample from someone else? Does the technology only recongize the drunk's specific breath?
If not, I see the following - Prominent person pays sober person to lie to the lock system for them and still drives drunk.
@ketsuko @VindicaSean There is this wonderful thing called Google, perhaps you should look it up yourself.
@VindicaSean @ketsuko As the child of an alcoholic, I can tell you first hand this is something we seriously need in this country. This is simply nothing more terrifying that I have experienced than being 9 and having your father pass out behind the wheel while driving up a hill.
@Kaobel @VindicaSean @ketsuko I will say, I think it is needed. I had an ex who was an alcoholic (the one reason why he went to AA, was to be seen by celebrities and pass them his headshot couldn't give a flying dog dukie about getting better). He personally told me about car accidents he had where he was drunk but he got away with it because no one got hurt (he also fled like the cowardly jack ass he was). I believe that you have the right to get blind stinking dunk but you also have the right to deal with the consequences of getting blind sinking drunk.
@VindicaSean@ketsuko are they really calling it that? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZZv5Z2Iz_s
@ketsuko But the government already mandates seatbelts, which you have to pay for, airbags, etc.
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A) Because when the technology fails it can leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere. Of course if you live in a city you may not comprehend not being more a few minutes walk from a solution to whatever your problem may be at the moment.
B) Because anyone who wants to get around the technology won't have a hard time doing so; pay someone else to blow into the thing or piece together some simple kit. Of course if you assume that the law is enforced by magic pixie faeries you may not grasp the concept of unenforceable laws.
C) Because it assumes that people are breaking the law and makes them prove otherwise. Of course if you assume this then you can assume that only guilty people are put on trial so you can dispense with trials by jury altogether.
I could go on at length
@Gallen_Dugall Getting around the interlock is in itself an offense that suspends the drunk's license even further (see my above comment) and results in an arrest of the person who gave the clean sample, if found out.
@VindicaSean @Gallen_Dugall so you're saying that the criminal would have to commit a crime to commit their crime and that would stop them from committing their crime.
nice logic
@VindicaSean @Gallen_Dugall what you're saying has utterly nothing to do with compulsory universal breathalyzers, which is what this comment thread is about
@Gallen_Dugall @VindicaSean What I *am* saying (once I get all these words you've placed in my mouth, out) is that the interlock is only used to ensure the rehabilitation, however limited, of an offender. It is not installed in the cars of those who do not have drunk driving convictions. Yes, you have to commit a crime to experience a legal penalty issued by a criminal court. That's the legal system the US is based on. We have penalties for those who jump parole, violate probation or other terms of their release from custody back out into the world; this is no different, only more finely focused.
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@VindicaSean @Gallen_Dugall Agreed, and that's kind of the libertarian point.
Cheaters will cheat regardless, and an interlock device will not stop them. You're left with a system that presumes guilt of the guiltless and does little to catch the ones it needs to.
@James.k.Polk @VindicaSean @Gallen_Dugall that was the point this comment thread was on about
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@VindicaSean @James.k.Polk @Gallen_Dugall Yes, there's a value to that. But I was/am specifically responding to the idea that these should be mandatory on all cars.
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@James.k.Polk @VindicaSean @Gallen_Dugall If they're only installed in violators' cars (and they are), they're ensuring, at least on a limited scale, the rehabilitation of said violator. It's like a driving probation; you couldn't be trusted while on the honor system, so now you're going to verify it every time for a set period. Sure, cheaters will cheat regardless. It does not in any way negate the value of keeping a drunk off the road. If you're not driving drunk, you literally have nothing to worry about. Other than those that are, and haven't been subject to the interlock yet.
@VindicaSean @Gallen_Dugall It wouldn't be difficult to take a DNA sample by swabbing the inside of the breathalyzer if there was reason to suspect fraudulence, either. Hell, it could even be programmed and engineered to do it itself. Enough blood, membrane, and tissues get into our spit that you can verify DNA from a reasonably small sample.
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@Kaobel @ketsuko @VindicaSean @Gallen_Dugall What? No idea what that means.
Also-- if you think libertarians are the only people with ideological blinders, it's only because you can't see past your ideological blinders.@Kaobel
@ketsuko @Kaobel @VindicaSean @Gallen_Dugall That's saying pretty much that any law that gets broken isn't worth following to begin with. Your point self-defeats.
@ketsuko @Kaobel @VindicaSean @Gallen_Dugall See all the words following 'Hell', or continue to do as libertarians tend to do and see only what they want to see.
@Kaobel @VindicaSean @Gallen_Dugall But in order to get to the point where anyone suspects that there has been cheating, something has to have happened. Yes? That means that the device failed in the first place.
@Gallen_Dugall Here's the thing with all of those:
A) is true of every part of your car already. Lord knows the number of times I've been stranded because a timing belt broke without any warning. Triple A is a good investment.
B) the fact that it can be gotten around doesn't stop it from being a pretty good convenience otherwise. A smart person can also get around needing car keys.
C) Cars aren't a civil right. It's the same deal as going through security at airports and sports arenas, which, while stupidly administered, isn't something I'd want to give up entirely.
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A) A timing belt is necessary to a cars functioning - this is only necessary to make a small group of busy bodies feel better about themselves.
B) In no way is having to stop and work a widget to get your car to run definable as a convenience - unless getting kicked in the groin is also a convenience. But what we have here is another law (like gun control) that really only applies to the law abiding so that they can be prosecuted for technical violations of the law and thus provide statistical justification to the incompetent corrupt buffoons in government.
C) A car is private property, a stadium is a "public gathering place", and an airport is technically Federal property (so they can also expose you to lethal toxins and lie to you about it) so yeah you have different rights in different places. The same applies to searches of your vehicle while out on the road - it's still private property and they need either your permission or a warrant.
The second part of your response to C is something that drives me crazy. Here in USAlund we pretend like we're so damned better than everyone else that there is nothing they can teach us. We seem completely incapable of learning even the most basic lessons already learned by other nations be it health care, airport security, integrating the military, just about everything.
D) Even the best breathalyzers are notoriously inaccurate and prone to false readings http://www.duicentral.com/evidence/breathalyzer-accuracy/
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@LYT @Gallen_Dugall While this could have the back-and-forth arguments for hours, MVN seems to think I need to be limited to my commenting and likes. (not a civil right of mine) I'll just go with one that is there are lots of Civil rights you don't really have. One of them is the right to be able to wear clothing; work where you want; and tons of others. People think seeking one's happyness is a civil right but have no problem defining it as not owning a (insert noun here, like car).
Damn this thing, take 3! Seems I don't even get to keep my civil right of free speech today.
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@LYT @Gallen_Dugall Yes, but, if it's easily enough gotten around, we have to start asking - whose sense of security is it more for? Is it for ours or the is it for the drunk's? If it's too easy to get around, it may just be a false sense of security.
Understand that I'm not automatically against these things, I just see some holes that make them a little more like a symbolic gesture and I'm trying to understant if they're really all that useful.
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These guys should get on Shark Tank. Also, how can you not have a smart phone? Get with the times Grandpa.
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@Canadian.Scott I don't even have a basic cell. I don't need it and it creeps me out to think that someone can find me anywhere, anytime. It also creeps me out to think that people these days are so _needy_ that they absolutely have to be joined at the ear to everyone they know at all times in all places.
Don't you ever feel crowded?
@ketsuko @Canadian.Scott Ironically, I broke down and got my first cell after I...broke down for real. Timing belt broke at 3 a.m. on the freeway, and rather than actually helping me, the cops busted out the breathalyzer (which I passed) after pushing my car off to a side street where it became harder for the Triple A guy en route to find me.
@ketsuko @LYT @Canadian.Scott My cell phone is my spare brain. Most of the time, my posts here come from my Galaxy SIII, and I would never get on a road without it with me.
@LYT @ketsuko @Canadian.Scott I won't lie. I've had a couple of those kinds of incidents, but after the initial emotion of the incidents had passed, my husband and I looked at our options again and realized that it would be a lot of money for something that we really only needed maybe twice in a decade.
He does have a corporate paid for cell though, so I'd be lying if I said we were totally without one. I just don't have a personal one.
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@Canadian.Scott because they're stupidly expensive while the tech they've replaced has become quite reasonable
