After a night out on the town, and one too many drinks, a lot of us rely on car services like Uber to get us home at night. But if you’re too drunk to drive, is it possible you’re too drunk for an Uber? The company is looking to patent a system that can tell if you’ve had one too many.
As an Uber driver, Dave Carpenter has pretty much seen it all when it comes to a drunken passenger. “If someone like a bartender or a friend walks somebody up to a car, that’s a red flag you need to look at,” he says. Though the Uber drivers have a responsibility to get you home, there have been cases where drunk passengers attack their Uber drivers or the passengers accuse them of sexual assault. Uber now wants to create the technology to detect if someone is drunk and they can either warn drivers or match the user with a driver who’s more experienced with handling them.
The technology will be able to track users’ typos, how precisely they click, walking speed and time of day. This will hopefully be able to tell if they’re intoxicated or not. If they are, Uber will match them with a driver accordingly. Though the idea is still pending application, Carpenter thinks it would be safer for everyone. He says, “It would be a hundred percent safer than what we’re doing now for us to have an idea of what we’re going into.”
Source: WHNT News