Launch HN: SannTek (YC S19) – Breathalyzer for Cannabis

maybe you can hypothesize some weird situation where individual drivers are worse, but overall traffic is unaffected. but individual users should still want to avoid driving high, as lower overall traffic deaths will not make you feel better about accidentally killing someone.

It doesn't even have to be about roads, "Hey Gary, Bob needs to do some shirt laundry if you know what I mean"

Steve: "Bob, can you come see me in my office please"

has general conversation with Bob about performance and the local Sportsball team, determines he thinks Bob is high

Steve: "Bob, before I let you go back out there on the assembly line operating that dangerous equipment, I'm sorry but I'm going to have to ask you to blow into this device. You smell like you've been out there dabbing for an hour straight and I asked you what you thought about last night's Sportsball game and you just smiled and nodded for a solid 5 seconds before asking what we were talking about".

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It can also be used in prisons/jails that have work release programs, where residents are released during the day to work leading up to their release and have to come back in the evening. They already do breathalyzer and random urinalysis on these folks.

Similarly parole officers could benefit from this.

Hospitals could also use it to determine if a patient is under the influence of THC instead of something else that may cause complications with their treatment in the ER and if this can be used for THC I suspect it could have other recreational drug applications too which again, will benefit treatment in the ER when patients aren't always willing to volunteer what they are on for fear of legal implications.

1. You turn 16. You drive on the simulator - if you pass, you do a real drive with a human tester.

2. In 5 years when you renew your license, you go on the simulator again. If you pass, you get to renew your license. No human-in-car test required.

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The advantages:

- This covers things we can't currently test for:

  - Marijuana
  - Spice and unknown drugs
  - Sleep deprivation
  - Deterioration due to age (afraid to bring this up, but it's an issue)

- It's an actual impairment/ability test. Rather than putting a number on how much {x} you consumed - it measures what matters.

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For accessibility issues, traditional driving tests (and blood tests for impairment) would have to be used. If your vision doesn't allow you to test on the simulator - you take a physical driving test with a person. Simulator tests can't be used for impairment.

Other interesting ideas:

- Insurance rates based on your score in the simulator (not sure if this would be fair, or could be abused - but thought it was an interesting idea).

- We could have data for how your driving ability degrades with age.

- It should maybe be codified that equipment changes (new simulators, etc.) are not allowed between a test and impairment test. So the state would need to keep old equipment around for 5 years for migration.

> Any reasonable device of this kind would fail a nonzero perccentage of sober drivers and pass a nonzero percentage of intoxicated drivers. And not just because of noise -- some people drive worse sober than others do high. So don't hold your breath waiting for laws to allow it.

Yeah I agree that people will take issue with that. I personally don't care what someone did 15 minutes before getting into their car, so long as they can safely drive.

Anyway, I thought this was fun to think about. It seems like a really nice solution. I'd love to hear some more reasons why it wouldn't work!

"... a similarly impairing dose of cannabis results in 0.00001 ppm of the drug in breath."