A ‘tattoo’ for gauging alcohol level?

There are certain things that can turn an everyday drive into a life-changing traumatic event for an individual. One is encountering a drunk driver out on the roads. The actions of drunk drivers sometimes trigger catastrophic crashes. Skilled personal injury attorneys understand the major impacts an accident caused by a drunk driver can have on a person’s life, and can help victims of such crashes fight for compensation to put towards tackling the challenges these impacts pose.

One of the things that can lead to drunk driving is a person guessing wrong on how intoxicated they are when deciding to get behind the wheel. Most people rely mainly on their own judgment when deciding whether they are sober enough to drive. This judgment can sometimes be quite a ways off.

A new technology might provide a more reliable way for people to gauge whether they are sober enough to drive safely. The recently developed technology is a biosensor patch. The patch, which reportedly looks like a temporary tattoo, is a wearable that measures the alcohol level in the wearer’s sweat. Reportedly, it takes about eight minutes to measure this level. The device is designed to send the alcohol level information to the wearer’s cellphone, with the idea being that an alert could be generated for the wearer when the levels reach a point where driving wouldn’t be safe.

The hope with the device is that it could provide an unintimidating way for a person to track their alcohol level in real-time and have something other than their own judgment to turn to when deciding if they are good to drive.

What are your thoughts on this new technology? Do you think, if such a device were made available on the market, it would be widely used? If using alcohol level monitoring devices did become more commonplace among the public in general, do you think it would lead to a reduction in drunk driving?

Source: CBS News, “Could a biosensor “tattoo” help stop drunk driving?” Brian Mastroianni, Oct. 19, 2016