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How Are Cars Being Used to Monitor Blood Alcohol Content?

couple rides on motorcycle

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention keep track of data on accidental deaths from driving under intoxication. Drunk driving is not a new phenomenon but the times are catching up to find ways of analyzing whether people are drinking and driving.

Testing BAC

Blood Alcohol Content, or BAC, has limits to which people can have alcohol in their bloodstream and be able to operate a motor vehicle safely. Going over that limit while driving can land a person in jail, serve time, lose their license, or at the very worst, end up hurting themselves or others. Researchers have been creating innovative ways to prevent a person from drinking drunk including:

  • Smartphone breathalyzer
  • Breathalyzer-controlled ignition systems
  • Voice-activated software

New Technologies

Voice-activated software sounds like something out of the future, but it is something currently being tested when it comes to BAC. a person’s car would ask a question is and if the person in the driver’s seat has such slurred speech they ‘sound intoxicated,’ they would need to call a cab or find a designated driver to take them home. These first steps for this device are coming from the Bavarian Archive for Speech Signals at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Institute of Legal Medicine in Munich, Germany. Between 2007 and 2009, researchers record ‘drunk’ speech patterns (stammering, stuttering, slurring, high-pitched tones) of German men and women. Participants were placed in the passenger seat of a car while talking and experiencing drunkenness of varying degrees. They created an archive of speech patterns that can perhaps be used to separate sober speakers from those with alcohol impairment. Some of the bigger ramifications are obviously privacy related and also that it takes away free will for a person to decide when and if they will drive under any kind of influence. The challenge is to figure out a way to support a person with addiction or trouble drinking to move forward from the addiction by seeking help for their problem. End of the day, it may just be a bigger challenge to help people seek treatment for addiction than to keep them off the roads.

Arbor Behavioral Healthcare knows that lifetime sobriety, health, and wellness, are completely possible. Each of our treatment programs offer the opportunity for holistic healing utilizing an integrative approach for the recovery of mind, body, and spirit. You can recover. You will recover. Call us today for more information: 844-560-7269