Whenever someone is pushing a mandate on someone else, I wish they would be called out if they are already following that mandate. In this case it would be asked of those from MADD, "Have you installed these devices yourselves?" I'm sure they haven't and I'm sure they think they don't need them.
I was in the military when Congress banned smoking in much of the military and other federal buildings but exempted themselves.
Person saying taxes should be higher for everyone -- what's stopping them from paying more right now?
If it's a step I haven't already taken myself, I can't even conceive of mandating that everyone do it before I start, but that's just too alien a concept it seems.
In a similar bit of hypocrisy, I feel the same way about drinking underage and the number of people who are perfectly ok ramping up punishments for the same "crimes" they themselves committed -- it's just the timeline in a different direction now.
> Person saying taxes should be higher for everyone -- what's stopping them from paying more right now?
Because me sending random cash to the federal government does absolutely nothing, and higher taxes can pay for actual programs. There's a huge difference between exempting yourself from a new mandate you enforce on everyone else, and simply waiting for a universal mandate before acting yourself.
You can voluntarily pay extra income taxes. That money goes into the general fund and is used to pay for actual programs, such as servicing interest on the $28T national debt and invading other countries.
There is no basis for believing that the payoff for coordination is elevated. If anything the opposite: we see that more centralized decision-making introduces larger deadweight losses. See US-Afghanistan, as enabled by the tax base, as an example.
> There is no basis for believing that the payoff for coordination is elevated
Libraries, fire stations, universal K-12 education? Certainly imperfect, but def benefit from coordination. Health care too - a lack of universal coordination makes life difficult.
On the private sector side, many companies are great examples of coordination payoffs (I trade entrepreneurial risk/reward for consistent benefits).
But it is the height of hypocrisy to force other people to do things that neither they nor you would do in isolation. You’re not preventing a prisoner’s dilemma here because the proposed tax contribution is strictly monotonic with or without individual participation.
>Whenever someone is pushing a mandate on someone else, I wish they would be called out if they are already following that mandate.
Why though? If you found out that many members of MADD had installed these devices would it change your opinion on requiring it for everyone else? If you found that someone campaigning for higher tax rates actually did make generous contributions, would it change your opinion on raising the rates? Somehow I suspect not, in fact I would hope you wouldn't be so easily swayed! So then we've not pushed the argument forward at all, just taken a detour down an irrelevant cul-de-sac in the hopes of finding a gotcha.
Those facts would not change my opinion, and as you said they alone should not change anyone's opinion. But if someone is already living by the rules they'd like imposed on me, I'm definitely more likely to listen to what they have to say.
> If you found out that many members of MADD had installed these devices would it change your opinion on requiring it for everyone else?
At least I would respect the argument. Right now I see too many people proposing the use of force to achieve something they don't believe in enough to do themselves.
Which really just means 'no.' So like I said, just a big waste of time, the argument for or against these drunk-driving systems is about whether the good for society is worth the cost not about who's making the argument or whether you respect them.
I don’t own a car, so no. But a bike is my primary means of traffic. Do I get no say in traffic safety that impacts me?
> Person saying taxes should be higher for everyone -- what's stopping them from paying more right now?
I also do this. California allows tax payers to pay taxes to a couple dozen special funds. I usually kick in extra for the rape kit tests and coastal preservation funds.
BTW, arguing bothsideism is one of the least effective ways to analyze policy. Focus on the specifics. Even though I support this mandate, one of the downsides is it costs $80/month to keep ignition locks calibrated. How does the federal government plan to make this equitable?
Perhaps, but drunk bike riders cause about as much mayhem as two drunk people fighting in a bar. Whereas drunk drivers are capable of easily killing someone without malice.
I write this as someone who has both been hit by a drunk bike rider and unintentionally hurt in a bar fight that wasn’t even involving me.
You've clearly never seen the damage a person can cause to the driver when hit by a car. If a person is in the road and intoxicated they can still cause injury or death.
The people who are most adamant about imposing rules on others are often those who are breaking them themselves, can't stop, and blame society for not having enough rules.
See all the morality crusaders who are also secretly sexting teenagers
If I do not drink and drive, why would I pay money to install a system to detect if I drink and drive? I would be throwing money out the window for zero gain.
However, I can with zero hypocrisy argue that everyone should have to do this before being allowed on the road, including myself. We can't tell who needs to have these installed, so we have to specify "everybody" for it to be effective. That would cover myself, which is annoying, but I would still gain a benefit from it would decrease my chances of someone else crashing into me while drunk.
And, I should not need to tell you this, but what is stopping me from paying higher taxes right now is that that is not a thing you can do. There is no voluntary tax payment.
> However, I can with zero hypocrisy argue that everyone should have to do this before being allowed on the road, including myself. We can't tell who needs to have these installed, so we have to specify "everybody" for it to be effective.
They have the opportunity to get one person closer to "everybody" but choose not to, so instead they choose to use the government to force people to do this.
You argue that the marginal benefit of you doing it on your own is too little for you to do it. Then you propose using force to add up a whole lot of "too littles" to make into something.
>If I do not drink and drive, why would I pay money to install a system to detect if I drink and drive? I would be throwing money out the window for zero gain.
And they propose to make millions of people waste this money when they don't believe in it enough to do it for themselves.
From what I've seen of the US, Congress exempts themselves from quite a lot legislation. I think they exempted themselves from the recent vaccine mandates.
> I'm sure they haven't and I'm sure they think they don't need them.
Source please.
Even if what you are saying is true, are you claiming that installing these devices on the cars of people who routinely drive drunk would not save lives?
>> I'm sure they haven't and I'm sure they think they don't need them.
> Source please.
Source - me. I'm sure. Please read carefully.
Also, it's not like they've presented large scale trials of this working.
> Even if what you are saying is true, are you claiming that installing these devices on the cars of people who routinely drive drunk would not save lives?
Am I claiming that? The discussion is about putting devices on all cars, not repeat offenders, so no.
I stopped myself from commenting so many times, but I just can't help myself. This is the dumbest fucking point of view. Do you think people who voluntarily install equipment to stop them from driving drunk are the people that need it? Your stupid ass ideology is harming your ability to view the world practically. Clearly people who drive drunk are the ones who need this installed, and they wouldn't do it voluntarily.
Now, I think cameras in our cars is something I hate and will fight against for other reasons, but your whole "do it yourself before mandating others" is a bad faith argument that makes no sense and is only used to distract from practical solutions in many areas.
> Clearly people who drive drunk are the ones who need this installed, and they wouldn't do it voluntarily.
And we already have systems for putting these systems in people's cars after they drive drunk. This new system is specifically targeting people who haven't been caught driving drunk. As such, MADD and Congress are absolutely in the targeted demographic for this bill. Frankly, given how often congresspeople get caught driving drunk, they should be probably be the first group to get them.
I would be utterly stunned if Congress isn't somehow exempt though. They'll leave a loophole for themselves, probably via not requiring the sensors to be retrofitted on imported cars or similar.
Please don't break the site guidelines like this, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. You may not feel that you owe better to people you strongly disagree with, but you owe this community better if you're participating here.
Of course I understand what it's like when you've been reigning in frustration and then it boils over, but still—we all need to take responsibility not for venting that into the threads here.
Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines like this multiple times recently. Can you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of the site more to heart? It's not ok to lash out at others, call names, go on the attack, etc., just because they're wrong or you feel they are. That doesn't help anyone.
> Do you think people who voluntarily install equipment to stop them from driving drunk are the people that need it?
No, I absolutely don't think they need it. Nor do I need it. But the discussion is about putting it in cars for everyone. They think I need to have a more expensive car, but they don't want to make their own cars more expensive until they can mandate that I do as well.
> "do it yourself before mandating others" is a bad faith argument
It's not a bad faith argument, and I've tried to live my life like this. One major consideration when I left the military is that as I moved up in rank I was going to have to enforce rules that I wouldn't actually follow myself.
People are very quick to use the force of law on others.
> Your stupid ass ideology is harming your ability to view the world practically.
I'll keep my ideology, thank you. Leadership isn't about driving the people before me.
Majority of comments here are on the headline and clearly did not read the article:
- It doesnt use breathalyzers, it uses safety systems similar as those for cruise control.
- It would be installed at the factory by manufacturers.
- It would be mandated by 2026, no different than how other basic vehicle safety equipment has been mandated for vehicles over time: seatbelts, airbags, reverse cams, third brake light, and so on.
My current driver monitoring system (Subaru Outback 2020 with whatever bells/whistles were available) was distracting and wrong so often that I had to disable it. With it on it would try distracting me with flashing messages and beeps while I was navigating 6 way intersections where I live. It was constantly unhappy that I wasn't looking exactly straight forward out the main window. The worst was probably highways where there was nothing in front of my vehicle for a quarter mile or more but I needed to look over my shoulder extensively to be able to safely change lanes out of the right-hand lane into the busier left hand lane.
That's barely broken in: I expect cars to be perfectly usable for many decades, if properly maintained. I do NOT want techo-obsolescence in a few years!
My personal goal is to never again own a car with a screen (especially a touchscreen), or with any kind of radio transmitter/transceiver to track and report anything back to the mfr. (And I'm an IoT guy!)
I've been wondering what the newest and safest car I could own that doesn't report back or at least could have its reporting removed without bricking the vehicle. Do you have any specific vehicles in mind?
Sure, but my car doesn't offer any way of feedback so I can tell them it's broken now. Are they testing the weird intersection layouts found in my suburb of Chicago? Further, why doesn't the alert threshold vary based on whether there is an obstacle or vehicle in front of me (they already detect this for other functions)? It's possible that these problems are going to be solved, but the software that will be released on MY2026 will be largely finalized by 2023 (2024 at the latest) which is coming up fast. While I'd love to believe that all of the safety systems are built on the same modular software architecture and I'm going to get upgrades on my MY2026 (which basically only happen in govt-forced scenarios right now), I don't have a lot of faith in this. It would be really nice to see safety systems evolve over time to get better, but this hasn't been common in any ECU to date and I don't see it becoming common unless the government also mandates it along with their fancy surveillance.
It provides central surveillance, monitoring, and control with a legal mandate to interface with domestic law enforcement. It is the government version of Apples photo surveillance system except controlloing peoples mobility, which is far more dangerous.
I'm sorry but none of what you are suggesting is mentioned in the article, and this system is not out yet for anyone to have evaluated it and come to your conclusion. Did you have a source for your statement?
Combined with an understanding of the technology involved, executive rule making, and the most probable implementation for liability and profit on the part of the car companies. And this federal mandate will deny citizens abilities to disbale telemetry or the network functions of the car. That is how it will play out.
And I am sure these devices will soon be connected to a network.
Soon if it breaks "you tried to disable it, that's a crime." If you potentially say something someone powerful doesn't like or your social credit score drops low enough "Sorry your driving privileges have been revoked."
I know it sounds good on the surface but this then recognizes that the government has a legitimate right to arbitrarily revoke your access to a motor vehicle that you've purchased and owned.
EDIT: Better yet since it is for "saving lives" and "safety" let's just ban alcohol all together that way we completely eliminate the risk of drunk driving altogether.
Yup, fuck this mandate 7 ways to Sunday. I'm already apprehensive about buying a new vehicle since they all practically have a nonnegotiable cellular data connection. There's 0 chance this breathalyzer data won't be sent back home as well.
It won't be breathalyzer data. From the article: "The type of technology that would be used is far from settled, with Congress stopping short of endorsing ignition lock devices like those that are often required by the courts for drunken-driving offenders and involve a breath test."
No, there is a slight but subtle distinction. The government license is what allows me to use the public roads, however I can drive and use my car however I want as long as I am on private roads. In this case I am not allowed to operate my vehicle if not approved by the government.
In this hypothetical case, which you made up, and which it makes no sense for the government to implement as they can already just take away your license.
It's not made up, that's a legitimate thing. If I own a farm and want to do donuts in the field in my car, I can do that without a license. I could do it while drunk if I wanted to, it's all perfectly legal.
You only need a driver's license to drive on public roads. This system changes that dynamic, because the government can stop you from driving on private property as well.
There's no need for it to be networked. Modern cars already are starting to gain in-vehicle gaze detection. It could be confirmed when you get your regular car inspection that the system is still working.
>"“We need technology to stop the nightmare on our roads,” Ms. Otte said."
I think the proper term for this is pearl-clutching, but in any event I absolutely hate when activists use wanton hyperbole. Yes, drunk drivers cause casualties, but is it really such a nightmare that requires integrating breathalyzers in every new car? I'd venture the majority of Americans would say no.
Additionally, I've become so disillusioned with American Democracy that I'm no longer proud of our style of government. The fact that Congress can pass such a wide-ranging law on the narrowest of majorities and each little politician can jam special interest provisions in makes me so angry. Congress has the power to operate in whatever little silly way it wants and this leads to such weird parliamentary chicanery.
We would be better off to eliminate all of MADD's current "gotcha" laws, raise the drunk driving BAC back up to something sensible (like 0.12-0.15), and make THAT a felony with mandatory jail time. But that doesn't have the opportunities for graft, corruption, and enrichment of the lawyer class that the current system does, so...
Local prosecutors can start charging people for attempted homicide with a deadly weapon. If locals don't want drunks on the roads, local juries will convict.
The problem is that society has lost all ability to have rational cost benefit discussion when lives or bodily harm are involved.
Imagine the classic "do we build an expensive overpass with a big span or a cheap one with a central support someone may crash into" problem that is often found in engineering ethics classes. We can't have that discussion here. It will be derailed with all sorts of BS.
>but is it really such a nightmare that requires integrating breathalyzers in every new car?
If the cost were zero, sure. But it's not zero. It'll cost tons of money and even more hours of needless frustration.
Do we know what the cost is? Seems to me that would depend on a lot of factors, such as how expensive the equipment is, how expensive it is to repair/replace, what the false positive rates are, what the consequences of a false positive are, what other additional burdens/inconveniences it imposes on the driver, etc.
If it's cheap enough (after considering all of the above) then yeah, maybe something like this could make sense. I do feel like it should be up to the ones proposing the legislation to prove that though before any new regulations are passed. Unfortunately, I suspect the fact that this measure is being bundled together with a trillion dollar spending package makes that unlikely.
It also depends on a ton of intangible factors like how much has drunk driving had and effect on your life. For some it will be huge for others it will be none
"Pearl-clutching" is a rather un-HN term to use since it implies a deliberate overreaction.
Drunk driving is a significant factor in road safety and based on the numbers for 2019, accounts for over 1/4 of the traffic fatalities in the US. When you consider the number of people who have lost friends and family to drunk drivers, it is absolutely reasonable that there are a lot of people for whom this is a legitimately emotional topic.
I am not familiar enough with the details of this proposal to know if it is a good idea. I do know enough to see that you also seem to be unclear as to what this proposal actually consists of; it absolutely doesn't push for integrating breathalyzers in every car or even in every new car.
One of the issues I see in American Democracy is that people are insufficiently interested in getting their facts straight.
>"Pearl-clutching" is a rather un-HN term to use since it implies a deliberate overreaction."
I genuinely believe this is indeed a deliberate overreaction on the part of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I see their statements as catastrophizing.
>"I do know enough to see that you also seem to be unclear as to what this proposal actually consists of; it absolutely doesn't push for integrating breathalyzers in every car or even in every new car."
This is one of the hazards of vaguely worded laws crammed into pass-or-die reconciliation bills. We really have no idea how to satisfy this now that it is codified into law. It might just be nothing, or it could be something intrusive. I doubt Congress will go back and pass a new law or amend this because of all the gridlock.
They're not. It's not even close. You're more likely to kill yourself than get killed in traffic. You're actually more likely to be killed by a sober driver than a drunk one (due to the populations).
I'm not saying it's a good situation, but if getting hit by a drunk driver is the number one risk you face, you have a remarkably safe existence and I'd be curious how you eliminated the risk of heart attack or suicide.
The "nightmare" is actually long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer horror. If you are in an accident caused by a drunk driver (or caused by anyone really, including yourself), it would indeed be a literal waking nightmare.
What's so horrible about a breathalyzer in every car? People get used to losing unimportant freedoms very quickly and easily. The seatbelt was initially viewed the same way.
There is a big difference between passing a law that requires people to wear a seatbelt and integrating an electronic device that prevents your car from operating normally when it 'detects' the presence of alcohol.
Edit: In addition, detecting the level of alcohol is a much more difficult and non-straightforward problem then checking if a seatbelt is plugged in. With a seatbelt you can have a simple circuit that gets completed when you plug the metal into the socket. But how will a breathalyzer work? Can it tell that I the driver am sober when my passenger(s) are heavily intoxicated? If there isn't a tube I have to blow into, I assume it passively scans the cabin air?
I vaguely remember a push to install a part into cars that prevented you from driving if the seatbelt was not fastened. It caused a lot of problems and now we just have a warning light and a pestering beep instead.
There's an enormous difference. All I'm doing is pointing out one potential similarity in the user acceptance curve. I'm arguing against the lack of vision in being unable to imagine a world where people accept this restriction, not claiming it is technically feasible.
Anyway, a blow tube that triggers an annoying beep seems like a meaningful positive step to me. It at least removes the excuse of, "I thought I was fine to drive".
How would a "passive monitoring" device differentiate impaired driving from simple bad driving? If it can't, does this law simply mandate a certain quality of driving? Potentially not a bad idea.
Extending half-jokingly, if we can adequately, uniformly, and proactively enforce a certain quality of driving... would that ultimately make drunk driving ok, as long as it's good enough?
I'm ok if this device also rejects people driving half asleep or very distracted.
Driving under the influence would still be illegal, but if you are somehow a competant drunk driver then yeah you could avoid the system triggering on you.. which seems fine? Like, it's no worse than the current system.
"Careless Driving" or "Reckless Driving" is the charge, and yes it already exists.
If you drive like an idiot and swerve or otherwise do things that are dangerous but otherwise not enumerated specifically (like blowing past a stoplight), you can be stopped and ticketed / charged / whatever.
This is the same form of false banner under which apple is deciding your photos and your phone are no longer your private property. The ultimate goal is centralized monitoring, surveillance, and control. They are barely trying to disguise it anymore.
How in the world is a safety device supposed to detect if I'm inebriated? The article says it stops short of recommending breathalyzers be installed, but I don't see another way of doing so.
How does this work when, say, we have a global pandemic and everyone starts slathering themselves with alcohol disinfectant as soon as they get in their cars?
> The type of technology that would be used is far from settled, with Congress stopping short of endorsing ignition lock devices like those that are often required by the courts for drunken-driving offenders and involve a breath test.
Whatever the mandated tech will turn out to be, it almost certainly won't be breathalyzer interlocks.
(A) can--
(i) passively monitor the performance of a driver of a
motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver
may be impaired; and
(ii) prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an
impairment is detected;
(B) can--
(i) passively and accurately detect whether the blood
alcohol concentration of a driver of a motor vehicle is
equal to or greater than the blood alcohol concentration
described in section 163(a) of title 23, United States
Code; and
(ii) prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if a
blood alcohol concentration above the legal limit is
detected; or
(C) is a combination of systems described in subparagraphs
So breathalyzer interlocks would be a functional solution under the bill. It'll probably be the solution, because I don't hold out a lot of faith that your car will be able to analyze your driving in real time and lock you out without an absurd number of false positives.
The glass 1/10th full side of this is that OEMs might figure out how to make the systems not suck and drive all those predatory breathalyzer companies out of business.
Show me some real systems and their efficacy before we even talk about how massive of an overstep these 'tools must rat out their owners' proposals are.
I was in the military when Congress banned smoking in much of the military and other federal buildings but exempted themselves.
Person saying taxes should be higher for everyone -- what's stopping them from paying more right now?
If it's a step I haven't already taken myself, I can't even conceive of mandating that everyone do it before I start, but that's just too alien a concept it seems.
In a similar bit of hypocrisy, I feel the same way about drinking underage and the number of people who are perfectly ok ramping up punishments for the same "crimes" they themselves committed -- it's just the timeline in a different direction now.