Alcohol and Cell Phones Are Never a Good Idea

Drunk driving, a favorite pastime of celebrities and average Joes alike, is going to get more difficult thanks to auto giant Nissan.

The Japan-based company has developed a concept car that can detect whether or not the driver has been drinking through odor and sweat emissions, reports New Scientist. If alcohol is found, the car may lock the ignition system or issue an alert; an alert which hopefully involves some sort of public humiliation through a loudspeaker on the car's roof.

Ok, there is no loudspeaker, but I can dream, right?

While there are still snags in the current design, such as registering one beer as intoxication for everyone, this could be a step in the right direction to cut down on drinking and driving, an act which killed 16,885 Americans in 2005. Yeah, I know, it's also a step toward the government having a tighter control over the people, but you don't need to put on your tinfoil hat just yet; this wonder-car is still far away from mass production.

Although it is also designed to prevent drivers from falling asleep at the wheel, Nissan's concept car does not prevent against a fairly new -- and fairly common -- type of driving impairment: cell phone usage.

Live Science reports that college-age adults on cell phones drive as poorly as the elderly who can't seem to find the accelerator. Ok, that's not how Live Science phrased it, but you catch my drift. Chatty drivers were also responsible for 330,000 injuries and 2,600 traffic fatalities in 2003.

And I know that every time you pass a horrible driver on the road, you glance over to see if the person is either elderly or on a cell phone. I do it too, especially in Palm Beach County.

Some of the gabbers try to throw you for a loop by using Bluetooth or another hands-free device, but I've found that it's usually easy to point them out: Just look for a swerving vehicle traveling at inconsistent speeds. Doesn't that sounds awfully like a drunk driver? Researchers at the University of Utah thought so, too.

The researchers were determined to find the differences between the way drunks and talkers drive. Using willing participants and a driving simulator, they found that "drunk drivers were more aggressive, tailgated more, and hit the break pedal harder," whereas "[c]ell phone drivers took longer to hit the breaks, and got in more accidents," reports Discover Magazine.

Wait a minute. If it's safe to assume that more people use cell phones than alcohol while driving, and cell phone users "got in more accidents" than the drinkers, why don't the statistics reflect this?

Because something tells me that the police are more likely to whip out a Breathalyzer than check your call log. Plus, only one of the two impairments is illegal in Florida.

While I am not against using cell phones while driving, I am against leaving your common sense at home. Driving in a late-afternoon monsoon? Don't use the phone. Weaving through heavy traffic? Don't use the phone. Been drinking heavily all evening? Don't use the phone, because drunk dials are obnoxious. And don't think about driving your car either, because everyone will hear the alert coming from your Nissan.