Apple is contemplating locking you out of your automobile for good cause, and your iPhone may be your new best drinking friend — and your safest one as well.
Hemant Singh – Mumbai Uncensored, 10th May 2022
Patently apple discovered a new patent. Apple appears to be seeking to improve its Car Keys function (which utilises NFC to transform your iPhone or Apple Watch into an electronic car key) by incorporating a breathalyser into your phone.
It is intended to discourage drinking and driving by locking a user out of their automobile if high levels of blood alcohol are detected by the phone, watch, or linked device.
It expands on an earlier patent, disclosed in early 2021, in which the iPhone and Apple Watch would access “database information” which would “includes information relating to human breath attributes such as typical ammonia concentrations, acceptable alcohol levels for driving, etc.” (e.g., so an user can compare infrared spectra acquired when the target element is that user’s breath and/or the person’s mouth to human exhalation data from the database).
In other cases, sampling the breath may not be sufficient to satisfy the app. The patent depicts scenarios in which a user is charged with performing a mental challenge, such as a dexterity exercise or arithmetic problem, to prove to the app that they are suitable to drive. So you’d better brush up on your mental arithmetic.
Safety first
Apple isn’t the only company considering turning the iPhone into a personal breathalyser. Third-party solutions, such as the BACtrack and AlcoDigital NEO, have been around for a while and use an iPhone’s processing capability to offer quick booze-level results directly to your phone.
They do, however, employ external attachments to obtain their measurements, which aren’t that far off the dimensions of the phone itself and come at a reasonable price.
At the moment, Apple’s earlier patents indicate that the suggested breathalyser capability could be utilised with either the iPhone or an external device – however how such technology would be prototyped for a handsets yet to be seen.
It’s great to see Apple at least addressing the dangers of drunk driving as it expands into the automobile market. In the United States, an estimated 28 persons per day are killed in drunk-driving accidents, with non-fatal crashes many times higher. Smart anti-drink driving programmes in the UK saw the number across the pond decrease dramatically since the 1970s, but an average of 230 drink-driving deaths are still reported each year.
However, the effectiveness of such a feature will still be dependent on a user’s self-awareness — they’ll still need to activate a breathalyser, fully conscious that a failing result will lock them out of their automobiles until they’ve sobered up. That possibility alone may be enough to put risky drivers off the idea entirely.
A patent, as always, symbolises the exploration and protection of an idea, rather than a statement of intent to create said notion. However, with two patents on alcohol driving issued in close succession, it appears Apple is taking this one seriously.
