Hmm you have not yet had your 24th covid booster. Your car will no longer work. Public emergency after all.

I know your comment is cynical, but really, an emergency rarely justifies driving while intoxicated.

If someone (or yourself) needs medical attention, call an ambulance. If somebody is in danger, call the police. If you need to go somewhere, call a taxi. If none are available you can also ask someone else to drive.

I am aware that there are some situations where there is no other option than driving yourself. But trying to justify the ability to drive intoxicated, just for that once-in-a-lifetime emergency seems selfish to me.

Someone is chasing you in another (older) car? Sorry, citizen, you are driving too erratically. Killswitch. Call the cops if you need help. The nearest one is 10 minutes away.

Your wife is bleeding out and every second counts? Sorry, citizen, you are driving too erratically. Killswitch. Call an ambulance if you need help. The nearest one will take 15 minutes to arrive and another 10 to get to the hospital.

Pissed off a bear? Sorry, citizen, you are driving too erratically. Killswitch. Call the forestry service if you need help. The nearest ranger is an hour away.

Your town is flooding and you need to get out by any means possible? Sorry, citizen, you are driving too erratically. Killswitch. Call FEMA if you need help. They'll be here in a few days.

Caught in a blizzard with the wrong tires and are sliding around as you limp your car home so as not to freeze to death? Sorry, citizen, you are driving too erratically. Killswitch. Call roadside service, but don't hold your breath; there's a killer snowstorm out there!

In critical danger but your phone is dead? Sorry, citizen, you are driving too erratically. Killswitch. You should have planned ahead and charged your phone.

Etc, etc...

Oh the horror flicks are gonna have a field day with this trope.

My reaction on the OP was about drinking under the influence of alcohol. Not on how the car may detect false positives on erratic driving.

But therein lies the problem. Any system that tries to apply a blanket policy WILL run into these very real problems. Regardless of what the actual intent was (blocking drunk drivers in this case), the unintended consequences of this will be severe.

I completely agree with you on this.

But again, my comment wasn't about this system, but drunk driving in general.

I acknowledge that situations exist where drunk driving is the only option (like with the flood/tornado/vulcano examples mentioned in other posts). But for most scenarios there is often a better solution that doesn't involve drunk driving.

My very real problem of being trapped in a car while being attacked a bear?!?!

Picking out one particular extreme case and making fun of it is a pretty good technique in a debate, but it rather misses the point in an authentic conversation. The point is that the sum total of all exceptional use-cases for cars (including, but not limited to running from bears) is actually large enough in practice that this kind of rule may not be worth its opportunity cost.

If we eliminate drunk driving (10k deaths per year, many more injured) in exchange for every single person in those fantastical scenarios dying, lives will be saved by many orders of magnitude. And that's granting that your drunk pregnant wife trapped in a blizzard wildfire with grizzly bears scenario actually happens.

Snowstorms happen across a lot of the USA for a good 3-4 months a year. If stop/start/slow/slide driving in winter conditions kills your car, you could wind up killing way more than 10k people, either through exposure, or because a snowplow or another vehicle didn’t see the killswitched, snow-covered car and rammed right into it.

I like living in snowy places. I could see this being a real problem, just like snowy conditions mean self-driving won’t work for me for many years in my only vehicle.

I tell my car how it drives. Not a computer.

I don't want a computer making the decision as to whether I can drive the car I paid for or not.

Maybe when society finally makes its final swirl down the toilet and we're finally not allowed to use private vehicles on public infrastructure, being forced to use government/corporate sponsored vehicles - maybe then they can tell me how to use _THEIR_ vehicle.

Well this is where they want it to go in the long run indeed. "You will own nothing and you will be happy". In this case something like Car As A Service.

>just for that once-in-a-lifetime emergency seems selfish to me.

It's going to be a once-in-a-lifetime emergency because you couldn't get away and died. Had a beer in the evening and at night heavy flooding comes in? Better run really quickly!

> I am aware that there are some situations where there is no other option than driving yourself. But trying to justify the ability to drive intoxicated, just for that once-in-a-lifetime emergency seems selfish to me.

I did try to explain that, obviously, some situations exist where you have no other option. A sudden flood after a night of drinking, and nobody else is sober to drive, then yes, I'd do the same.

My point was that whenever a topic about drunk driving comes up, many people will instantly jump to the "but what about an emergency!?" scenario. All I was trying to explain is that there often (but not always) is a better option than drunk driving.

And it should be your decision what option to take.

Aside from wanted to rely on cops/ambulance on any emergency that happens after two drinks, you are assuming that the system works well in nominal cases, and won’t have specific bugs that will prevent driving in otherwise ok circumstances.

For instance alcohol sensors used by cops need to be recalibrated every so often. Even less sophisticated systems like tire pressure on modern cars work well most of the time, but will fail and need repair at some point. These sensors used to check your intoxication status will fail and you might not be able to drive your car to the repair shop. Or worst case scenario they fail because you are in problematic situation that triggers the false alarm and you’re double stuck there.

Overall I don’t see a track record that warrants us to be optimistic about this working as well as we want to…

Or, through government legislation, you're only allowed to take your alcohol sensor to an authorized dealer to get it maintenanced, _AND_ you'll have to pay to get it calibrated!

>If someone (or yourself) needs medical attention, call an ambulance. If somebody is in danger, call the police. If you need to go somewhere, call a taxi. If none are available you can also ask someone else to drive.

I know many of us here live in California, New York and other more populated areas so it is understandable we don't know what life is like in other areas.

Some people live in rural areas where it is not practical to just wait for a cop or ambulance. You would die if you did. Some small towns don't even have taxis.

"once-in-a-lifetime" for an individual is more than 100 million (current US population divided into roughly 3 generations) times in aggregate over the course of a given generation (again, roughly speaking).

What fraction of those is an acceptable death/disability rate as compared with the rate of drunk-driver caused fatalities and disability?