As many in South Carolina know, having a drunk driving conviction is no laughing matter. Now, in addition to the conventional punishments, some drivers are being monitored by new technologies developed to fight drunk driving.
According to KTHV, one Arkansas county is using a new app to check on repeat DWI offenders throughout the day. The app, Check BAC, uses a Bluetooth breathalyzer and requires its users to record a video of themselves while taking the breathalyzer test to be used in their monitoring. Officials say those who are in the program have to log in every three hours, and that tests can be randomly given throughout the day as well. The video is meant to show that the user is the one actually taking the test and to give officials an idea of the behavior and surroundings of the person as they take their test. If there is any alcohol detected in a user’s test, the monitoring system will contact the authorities.
As Geektime reports, there is also an app in development that will track users’ movements to detect intoxication without using a breathalyzer. This app, which is currently testing at 93 percent accuracy, runs constantly in the background, recording data about a user’s movement to determine what typical, sober, movement is so it can look for changes that indicate inebriation. The developer is a Masters of Sciences student at Ben Gurion University in Israel, and he hopes to be able to get his app to communicate with connected cars so they will not start when a driver’s movements indicate that he or she has had too much to drink.