From my previous comment, it looks like NHTSA is moving faster than I predicted. We’re now at step 1, with this Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.
(edit: I jumped the gun, we’re still at step ‘0’ on my original list)
Most of this notice seems to be a report on why ‘impaired driving’ is bad. I see alcohol, cannabis, mobile phone use, drowsiness…etc.
Due to technology immaturity and a lack of testing protocols, drugged driving is not being considered in this advance notice of proposed rulemaking.
Makes sense.
There is no clear and consistent engineering or industry definition of ‘‘impairment.’’
Yep, another unclear request by Congress.
NHTSA believes that Congress did not intend to limit NHTSA’s efforts under BIL to alcohol impairment.
Okay, that’s fair.
Camera-based-systems, however, are increasingly feasible and common in vehicles.
Uh-oh…
The Safety Act also contains a ‘‘make inoperative’’ provision, which prohibits certain entities from knowingly modifying or deactivating any part of a device or element of design installed in or on a motor vehicle in compliance with an applicable FMVSS. Those entities include vehicle manufacturers, distributors, dealers, rental companies, and repair businesses. Notably, the make inoperative prohibition does not apply to individual vehicle owners. While NHTSA encourages individual vehicle owners not to degrade the safety of their vehicles or equipment by removing, modifying, or deactivating a safety system, the Safety Act does not prohibit them from doing so. This creates a potential source of issues for solutions that lack consumer acceptance, since individual owners would not be prohibited by Federal law from removing or modifying those systems (i.e., using defeat mechanisms).
Note that “make inoperative” does not apply to a “kill switch” in this case. NHTSA uses the term to mean “disabling required safety devices”. For example, as an individual vehicle owner, it’s perfectly legal for you to remove the seatbelts from your car, despite Federal requirements. But it’s illegal for the entities listed above to do it. (This example doesn’t extend to state regulations. It’s legal for you to remove your seatbelts, but may still be illegal to drive a car without them.)
There’s a short ‘discussion’ here regarding how to passively detect impaired driving, noting the difficulties of creating such a system. Followed by a note that basically says if they can’t do it within 10 years, NHTSA can give up and not do it, as stated in the Infrastructure law.
There’s a long section on how to detect various types of impairment, current methods of preventing impaired driving, etc. An interesting section about detecting blood-alcohol level using infrared sensors embedded in the steering wheel. Body posture sensors can be used to detect driver distraction.
This is followed by a brief overview of the technologies NHTSA is considering:
Camera-Based Driver Monitoring Sensors
Hands-On-Wheel Sensors
Lane Departure and Steering Sensors
Speed/Braking Sensors
Time-Based Sensors
Physiological Sensors
On page 850 (21 of the PDF), NHTSA asks for feedback to several questions. There are a few pages of relevant issues, so I won’t cover them here. If you wish, you can go here to leave a comment. Please don’t leave irrelevant garbage like “I oppose this on the grounds of my Constitutional rights…” While applicable in this situation, it’s irrelevant to NHTSA, and commenting like that will just waste everybody’s time. There’s a section on page 855 (26 of the PDF) about Privacy and Security.
That’s that. Let me know I can answer any of your questions. I’ll try to come back to this post throughout the day and see what’s happening. But, I do not work for NHTSA, so can’t remark on agency thought process.
Thanks for looking through all of this. If I’m understanding right, it seems like Congress is asking NHTSA to do a task that is probably not possible, but they are required to at least go through the motions to try?
It seems like they just told nhtsa to use technology to fix drunk driving so they can wash their hands of the situation and claim they tried to do something, but nhtsa couldn’t figure it out. Why didn’t they tell the NIH to eliminate the cancer while they were at it.
I do believe the technology to detect BAC is too erroneous to inflict on innocent drivers, and technology that could detect impairment through driving characteristics, while possible for individual drivers could never work on a population level. There’s going to be a lot of overlap between impaired drivers and just naturally bad drivers.
Exactly. There’s too much possibility of false positives in most of these technologies to be safe. There’s a section where NHTSA covers how they should handle disabling a vehicle in a dangerous situation. For example, if I’m in the middle of the woods camping and drinking, should I be able to drive my car to escape a forest fire?
For example, if I’m in the middle of the woods camping and drinking, should I be able to drive my car to escape a forest fire?
The problem, of course, being that if an emergency override of any kind exists for such situations- then that override can always be used, making the restrictions null and void. which means all systems were simply added cost and maintenance headaches passed onto the consumer for zero net benefit.
Sure maybe they could make an always online system like onStar that would let you request an override to be reviewed by a person… but that’s fucking hilarious to think any manufacturer is going to take on that cost, they’d make it a mandatory subscription for some stupid AI override bot, and that is an even bigger pile of fucking nope.
I think this whole kill switch thing is a terrible idea, but if it must happen somehow then an override that logs when it is used might be a bare minimum.
Still think it’s awful, just the least awful.
Right, so then who monitors the logs? Are there punishments for excessively bypassing safety features? Because the goal of these features is to stop a crash from happening. If you can bypass them at all, a log entry isn’t going to help the crash victims. Which means the system must inherently be extremely totalitarian and strict if it is to succeed in its stated goal, which is not something you will get most drivers to sign on to.
To be clear I am agreeing that the entire kill switch idea is poorly conceived and absolute garbage (nothing new from congress there). I’m just enumerating the problems with allowing any sort of reasonable exceptions to an inherently unreasonable idea.
if that’s the stated goal, instead of justifying ever more surveillance
You know what would eliminate a ton of drunk driving?
Functional Public Transit
But that isn’t something we can pass off onto the consumer and break their cars, so we’re not gonna do it.
Also walkable towns and cities. Also public and community spaces. Also strong interconnected communities. All these things are bad for capitalism and the ruling class and their enforcers though so don’t expect to see any change in the policy of dismantling communities
The point is that anyone who is drunk as a skunk might not have the necessary mental capacity to leave the car at the party place and take the bus.
Heck, even if they already arrived by PT, they will either a) vomit into the PT, B) fall asleep and end up somewhere, c) get into the wrong PT and end up somewhere, and/or d) get fleeced on the way.
This is not an excuse for drunk driving, it’s just explaining that PT is not really a solution to this particular problem.
I really doubt that’s a significant portion of drunk drivers. Those people would not be getting far when driving anyway.
The amount of fighting there was about lowering the BAC limit from 0.10 to 0.08 leads me to believe that’s where a large portion of them are.
It would definitely be a solution for me. Two beers in and I’d be safer in a bus than behind the wheel.
Also, if you’re drunk as a skunk, all these outcomes are better for everyone than getting behind the wheel and messing up somebody else’s life.
More parts in my car that can:
- Break and render my car inoperative until fixed
- Harvest my data for sale or AI model training
- Take photos of me that can oopsie doopsie leak to the internet
- Produce false positives and at least temporarily delay normal operation
- Surveil me
- Be hacked and used for nefarious purposes
Lovely.
I’m pissed enough already that my Subaru takes recordings of me through my OnStar microphone to train AI or sell or whatever. (Subaru’s privacy policy says I agree to allow that basically by existing in a Subaru.) And Subaru is not the worst privacy offender.
I’m all for safer driving, but the car companies have to be creaming themselves over all the data this is would let them harvest in the name of “safety.”
Your link to leave a comment appears broken.
I admire the desire to reduce impaired driving, but not only are there so many edge cases where detection will create false positives or negatives, I frankly do not trust any modern auto manufacturers to implement it cleanly.
Modern cars are already an absolute travesty when it comes to consumer rights, privacy, and data safety. The only logical outcome I can possibly see for such systems is manufacturers using that data against your will for additional profit. That data WILL be abused in any way possible, it’s the universal law of business.And more risky than that, these complex electronic systems will fail. And they will fail frequently, and often, because manufacturers will cut as many corners out of them as they can until they are the bare minimum to be legally compliant without any care to longevity.
So what happens when your $1800 steering wheel alcohol sensor fucks off 500 miles out of warranty, and constantly says you have a BAC of 0.20 leaving you stranded 80 miles from home? Will they log that you tried to drive drunk, then sell that data to your insurance and mortgage companies who instantly raise your rates by double because you’re “high risk”, despite having never done anything wrong with no recourse whatsoever? You bet your fucking ass they will!Maybe I’m cynical and just acting like an angry boomer, but I consider myself a responsible citizen and will NEVER buy a vehicle that implements any of these technologies, because not only do I not need them, but I guarantee you the implementations will be absolute hot garbage.
I mean, I’d never buy a modern car anyway because their current electronics and auto transmissions are also hot garbage… but that’s a separate problemAmerica will do anything to not implement public transit and less car dependency.
How else will I be able to roll coal in my pavement princess because I have
a small dickhuge throbbing masculinity?
One of the things that was posited was that cars would look at the way you were driving, and if you were driving “erratically” it would shut off.
So what happens when you’re trying to get someone to a hospital because they’ve been seriously injured and are bleeding to death in your car? No, it doesn’t happen very often. But I can think of at least one case: Kentucky Ballistics, who had a rifle explode and blew shrapnel into his jugular. You will absolutely be driving erratically in those circumstances; exceeding the speed limit, weaving, honking, turning without signaling…
Putting other people in danger. Yeah not a good case
When it’s your partner or child that’s god an arterial bleed, you’ll do it too.
You will bleed to death from a severed artery in under five minutes unless you can stop the bleeding. It’s going to take at least that long for an ambulance to show up.
I don’t disagree. Would do the same thing. Bit it’s not a good reason.
Exactly why driverless cars are required. Humans are bad at driving. Emotional and self preservation
Driverless cars would be worse; programming the kind of judgement calls into an expert system is… Not easy, and likely won’t work. They will probably do well with routine driving, when everyone else is also using an expert system to drive, but in an emergency? How do you convince your car that it’s an emergency? And what keeps someone from, say, lying? Like, I’m late to work because I overslept, so I need my car to drive 100mph, versus my home is on fire and I need to get there ten minutes ago to get my cats out?
The problem is that edge cases exist, and it’s really, really hard, if not outright impossible, to plan for them with an expert system.
No they wouldn’t break the speed limit. But less people would die from car crashes. So in fact they would be better. Just not in this situation. Which again is incredibly rare.
It never ever breaks speed limit. It doesn’t have to. No situation requires you to put your life above others.
No situation requires you to put your life above others.
Demonstrably false in the case of emergency vehicles. Going faster is not necessarily a risk; the autobahn has generally lower rates of accidents than the US interstates, despite people routinely driving >140mph.
Speed limits have always been a compromise between utility and lethality. You could nearly eliminate all accidents by having speed limits be no more than 20mph in any place. But it’s recognized that this isn’t practical, so we set speed limits at 25mph in school zones, 35 in residential/city roads, 45 on rural roads, 55 on unlimited access highways, and 65/70 on most interstates. Higher utility–an emergency–necessitates taking more risk.
If someone will die if you don’t break the speed limit, versus someone might die if you do, you’re probably going to break the speed limit.
Emergency vehicles cause quite a lot of fatalities. They are also taught how to drive at speed and motorway driving should have less crashes. It’s intersection and corners that causes issues.
Not American so no. Not how all places operate.
People break the limit all the time. Speed isn’t really the problem with drivers. It’s attention. Speed is a factor as you can’t react as fast but phones and other issues.
Sources. My dad was a firefighter for 30 years.
