The interesting part is how bad the interlock was. First off, it can apparently randomly not work, so you get three tries. Worse yet, per the official documentation, apparently they can misdetect an ignition while driving at speed, and when that happens you have to pull over and blow within thirty seconds. Now, this is not something you can do while driving, as you have to look at the camera while you do it, on top of needing to have a deep breath. There's no motivation to improve this, because the customer is the legal system, not the person who has to have it installed
All this seems to be is a company collecting corporate welfare while doing the bare minimum. Such companies should both be sanctioned and have their leadership investigated for potential fraud.
If you receive public dollars to function, the public should expect some modicum of sensibility and accountability.
Sorry but these companies are all scams thrusted upon the public. Any business that takes government money should be held accountable or compelled to engage in workplace democracy.
I'm not a fan of companies making garbage products while getting rich off of public dollars. Just because some people like corporate welfare doesn't mean the vast majority of the public likes it.
NHTSA was directed to write some guidelines/rules around the implementation of passive impairment detection as OEM features. They have yet to do so, probably because it is flaky technology.
My guess is that the final rule implementation will be similar to the distracted driver detection that is already in many new vehicles.
I might be wrong on that assumption - I don’t drink, myself.
Disabling all of them would have silly consequences, and wouldn't be compatible with other safety regulations.
The above is sadly serious. It is almost impossible to find a job and a house you can afford in walking distance of each other, demanding there be things like grocery shopping as well make it not feasible for most people. Taking away someone's car is cruel and usual punishment that cannot be accepted.
As a Brazilian, that statement feels bizarre. Yeah, my job and my home are not in walking distance of each other. I simply take the bus. Sure, some jobs are not within reach of the bus (or the ferry, or the metro, or the light tram, etc), and some jobs need a car (for instance, it would be hard for a HVAC technician to take all their equipment on a bus), but saying it's "almost impossible" to find a job?
> demanding there be things like grocery shopping as well make it not feasible for most people.
That also sounds bizarre to my ears. Most places I've known have small grocery shopping places on nearly every corner. You just have to walk.
Being able to live car free is pretty much limited to (expensive) major cities and some (expensive) mid-sized college towns.
The city of about 50,000 I'm from not only has no public transit and limited sidewalks, it doesn't even have crosswalks across the two main 6-lane roads that divide the city, so you can't safely walk more than about a mile even if you wanted to.
And the other 55% may have access but often it doesn't meet people's needs (it may not go when/where they need to go)
Only 11% of Americans use public transit at all on a weekly basis.
3.5% of Americans use public transit to commute.
This is exactly what the parent meant by designing the country in a 'car-brained' fashion. It's not true in many/most other countries.
Europe may not drive as much as America, but it's still about half. Cars are popular worldwide for a reason, and it is not American corporations magically convincing everyone how useful they are.
It's also entirely moot, as we're not redesigning the country in the short term to cut down on DUIs.
That's not to say that anyone should drive after drinking, but the basic reality is that impairment is often individual, and cannot be directly measured by blood alcohol content. Many people are impaired with a lower BAC than 0.08, and in many states you can now be charged and convicted of DUI even if your BAC is not beyond the legal threshold on the basis of purely circumstantial evidence.
There's no good answer here, because we need cut and dried evidence in our legal system to prevent abuses, but there's not really good ways to do that. Separately, the leading cause of accidents is no longer drunk driving in most parts of the West, it's inattentive driving due to cellphone/electronics usage while operating a vehicle. Younger generations don't drink as much as older generations, to the point that zero-percent alcohol spirits and NA beer are now becoming broad markets and it's dramatically affecting bar/pub culture, but younger generations nearly as a rule are addicted to their smartphones.
Alcohol abuse has been around about as long as we've been human. We've just constructed a society where Alcohol abuse is far more likely to pick up collateral damage.
People dont willingly put these alcohol breathalyzer interlocks on their vehicles. They're 100% court mandated, as a punishment for, usually, drunk driving.
This country is so hell-bent on making criminals' lives worse and worse as a never-ending punishment. So what 150k people cant use their cars. 'They did something wrong and deserve it', is the usual motto in the USA.
Now, lets have a discussion about software liability....
Unfortunately the US public has no interest in this issue. They have a dual morality where lawbreaking is wrong, but profiting off of criminals and the poor isn't. So mandatory prison labor, expensive monitoring, for-profit probation services, and for-profit jails are fine.
Literally if you don't pay or play, you go to jail. But it was a plea so you "volunteered" (to not go to jail).
Maybe I'm in the wrong here, but I do find it pretty fair that people that can't responsible use a vehicle aren't allowed to use a vehicle. You don't see me flying airplanes for hire ...
> Now, lets have a discussion about software liability....
You're welcome to demand that the software you use provide a warranty. For some reason government agencies which actually would have the ability to demand this seem to not care. It does seem extremely negligent to allow people who can't use cars responsibly to use cars with provided software without a warranty.
Except they are allowed to use a vehicle. This issue isn't that they aren't allowed to use their vehicles. The danger is the disruption in what they are allowed to do and software/hardware failing. This is dangerous not only for them, but others as well.
And to be clear, this is specifically about people who are allowed to drive with a breathalyzer. So, "aren't allowed to use a vehicle" makes no sense. They are allowed to drive with certain conditions. Just like you and me.
The choices these defendants are being offered is "We can charge you for 3-10 years in prison, or you can pay a pile of money to the state and our private companies for 1 year of a breathalyzer in your car"
The plea deal is at best blackmail, and enriches the state and 'business partners' (private companies) via more suffering.
And given how this plea deal system works, I would wager that quite a few who pled out didn't do anything wrong, but are still subject to the blackmail and subsequent removal of rights with tenuous due process at best.
The whole root of this issue is that the USA demolished most of public transit to go all in on the personal vehicle. This was done nationwide to increase profits for vehicle companies and gas/oil companies. If we did have good/great public transit, drunk driving would be a significantly less of a thing. But that would cut into US domestic car production and oil/gas production.
Interlock devices are typically mandated for 6-12 months if it's your first DUI. In California, you will be mandated to use it for three years after your fourth (!) DUI. DUI laws in many parts of the US are ridiculously permissive and your criticism is pretty off-base.
Oh sure there are plenty of people who are guilty and have a problem, they get caught too, but the courts want money so they aren't just going after the problem, they are charging any and every person possible. Some people get charged DUIs for annoying a cop or being tired, and even if their blood work comes up clean, do they drop the case? No. They just argue they were high on some other drug that they didn't test for.
If the people of the country were more constitution minded, they would want a punishment that fits the crime, and no additional punishment on top of it. So I share this gripe, even though I consider DUI a very serious crime (including those who do it and don't get caught).
An interlock prevents you from driving drunk. Suspending a license pretty frequently does nothing.
So if the punishment for driving drunk is 3 years in prison, you may be able to avoid it by accepting a plea deal that infringes on your third amendment rights.
This can even occur in a civil case.
N=1, but I know of one case where the defendant was offered a lock on their car or an ankle alcohol monitor. Of course they were going to choose the car lock.
Courts (read: prosecutors) routinely use legal blackmail to coerce defendants into agreeing to plea deals. The threat is "we will prosecute you, and add extra charges, and push for maximums, that is unless you agree to these terms".
And those terms, as others have rightly pointed out, can include punishments the court normally isn't permitted to ask for on sentencing.
Also, with our judicial punishment based system, and that those with more money can afford better lawyers. And those with less money get public defenders, who are well known for not doing their job, or the absolute minimum to keep from being investigated by the Bar.
The only way out of here is to ever avoid interacting with police or courts. Once you're in that system, any sympathy is thrown out the window, and you become a money-pinata for the state and private 3rd party companies predating on your socio-economic class.
I've had my license suspended. It was just speeding. It's my only traffic ticket, let's not focus on that too much.
Do you know what was stopping me from getting in my car and driving it to work? Absolutely nothing.
You are free to backup your claim that magically _everyone_ that illegally drives drunk will not abstain from driving becasue they don't have a license.
On 2019-04-19 my wife's car was struck, while she was driving, by a driver who was driving under suspension. The driver had a bench warrant out for their arrest for failure to appear in court on a previous driving under suspension violation.
I searched my local court database and found this driver had driving under suspension or driving in violation of restriction charges on: 1999-07-12, 2000-01-27, 2000-02-03, 2000-02-14, 2000-05-03, 2001-07-23, 2011-07-13, 2013-07-10, 2013-10-24, 2016-03-10, 2016-05-23, 2016-08-15, 2016-09-09, 2018-04-09, 2018-05-03, and 2019-04-19 (when my wife was struck).
The driver has since had additional driving under suspension charges on: 2019-08-15, 2022-04-29, 2022-08-18, and 2025-10-21.
The driver had served jail time, in the past, for some of these violations, too.
I tend to think a significant fraction of people who don't respect the law prior to conviction don't magically begin to respect the law after conviction.
(My wife wasn't injured, fortunately. The other driver was also driving without the state minimum required liability insurance, so we ended up eating the cost of the crash, too. This also seems to be indicative of a general disrespect for the law.)
That isn't what I said, you're misrepresenting me. That isn't very nice.
I said someone who _already broke the law_ in a very provable way, most likely doesn't give a fuck about driving without a license.
> You are free to backup your claim that magically _everyone_ that illegally drives drunk will not abstain from driving becasue they don't have a license.
I didn't say everyone. There you go again, making shit up and putting words in my "mouth" as it were. This isn't a good-faith conversation. Take care.
...but even though it's impractical to avoid these machines entirely, in many parts of the world it's possible (and enjoyable) to simply choose a bike instead.