# Should all cars be equipped with breathalysers? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 24, 2012, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-all-cars-be-equipped-with-breathalysers/626124 "2012-06-24T03:45:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-all-cars-be-equipped-with-breathalysers/626124/61 "2012-06-29T12:34:59Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Right, so you value your car being able to start consistently more than you value the lives of ~10000 Americans a year. You’re saying that if _I_ don’t put this device on _my_ car, 10,000 Americans will die every year? I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. I don’t currently have one on my car, and somehow I manage to kill less than 10,000 Americans every year. By rhetorically reducing the solution to the installation of a _single_ device on _my_ car, you are trivializing the total cost to the nation as a whole. There are 75 million cars sold in the US every year. If the device adds $100 to the cost of each vehicle, then we’re talking about a solution that costs us $7.5B per year. This does not even consider the intrusiveness and inconvenience of it, as well as the dangerous “guilty-until-proven-innocent” mindset fostered by this solution. How do other countries manage to obtain a much lower rate of drunk driving without resorting to solutions like this? Surely they are doing so more economically and less intrusively. BTW, [we had this discussion three years ago,](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=519633) at which point I opined the following: the vast majority of us drivers who do not drive drunk resent being treated as potential criminals with no self-control or sense of responsibility. Years ago there was a feminist group that had taken all of the male names from a college student directory and published them in a list titled “POTENTIAL RAPISTS.” Those listed were rightly indignant, and in the same vein I resent the idea that you regard me - with my decades-long, accident-free, alcohol-free driving record - as little more than a potential drunk driver who is not ever to be trusted to his own judgment. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-all-cars-be-equipped-with-breathalysers/626124/62 "2012-06-30T06:38:36Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > The problem with this argument is that it’s an emotional one, not a reasoned cost-benefit analysis. On a social level, though, it is. It is, however, an emotional reaction for teetotalers to take it personally and get all huffy at the thought of preventative devices being built into the cost of manufacturing a car, but that already happens. (You can’t start an automatic, for example, if it’s in gear.) It’s not like the auto maker is shaking its finger at you personally and implying that you drink too much. It isn’t known who’s going to buy a car when it’s made, and that’s the justification for built-in safety hardware. You can’t go into the show room and say, “Give me one without the alcohol detector in the steering wheel, and knock $400 off the price. I promise you, I never drink.” **Martin Hyde** ’s point is that, socially, the cost-benefit analysis of this from individuals’ viewpoints hasn’t risen to the political threshold for any law to get passed in order to make it happen yet. It might someday, especially if the technology makes it so cheap that the auto makers won’t resist it, and go for the “we-believe-in-safety” image boost. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-all-cars-be-equipped-with-breathalysers/626124.md?page=3)