Despite the progress that's been made in making cars safer, driving is still dangerous, and it only gets more so when alcohol comes into the equation. It's also not an easy thing to address short of direct intervention from other people to keep a drunk person from getting on the road. Still automakers and other technology companies continue to look for ways to prevent drunk driving. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, BMW submitted a patent that takes advantage of virtual cell-phone key technology to put a roadblock between the inebriated and, well, the road.
How It Works
More and more car companies are giving owners the ability to use their cell phone as a car key. It lets those owners carry one fewer thing with them, but it also opens up other possibilities. Some companies let people share that virtual key to other people with their phones, either indefinitely or for set periods of time. It's even possible to restrict certain options to different keys, like you might be able to let someone have access to the car to drop something off, but not be able to drive it.
These capabilities are what BMW is taking advantage of with its patent. Basically, the idea connects the phone key to a breathalyzer. The breathalyzer could be part of the car, or it could be a portable device. Either way, it would have to be able to connect to the phone key app, and the phone key app could be easily programmed to require the driver to use the breathalyzer and test below the legal blood-alcohol content level. This would likely be much easier to implement than past breathalyzer interlocks that have to be installed in the car and hooked up to the ignition, since everything could be handled digitally. As the patent describes, it could also offer a bit more flexibility than those systems, as the phone key could still allow the person to activate the vehicle's accessory power to have radio and climate control functions if they needed to wait in the car for a taxi or driver to show up.
It seems as though the idea would bee most useful in a situation in which a court has ordered a person's vehicle be equipped with an interlock. It also would require that vehicle to be compatible with a phone key. It also won't do anything for an owner and vehicle that doesn't have the feature enabled. Still, it's an interesting idea that could probably be implemented easily.
Source: WIPO
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This article originally appeared on CarBuzz and is republished here with permission.
