New temporary tatoo test promises more accuracy to prevent drunk driving and a dui!
As anyone who’s been to college can attest,any story that begins with someone getting drunk and ends with them getting a tattoo usually leads to intense feelings of regret once the alcohol wears off. Not to mention the other actually more life altering event of a DUI. But according to researchers at the University of California San Diego, a special kind of temporary tattoo after a night of drinking just might keep you out of jail.
This article lays out the rationale: many of the more common ways to detect a person’s blood-alcohol content can be rendered inaccurate (such as breathalyzers) or are too invasive for the demands of a typical traffic stop (such as drawing blood to be analyzed). Instead, researchers looked for a method that could provide officers with easily obtained, accurate results that did not require drawing blood or dealing with other bio hazards.
To achieve this, the National Institute of Health held a contest for researchers and inventors to design a device that could meet these demands. The winning design came in the form of a small temporary tattoo magnetically attached to a small computer chip. The tattoo itself is made with silver and silver chloride electrodes. When connected to electricity, the tattoo releases a special chemical that causes the skin to sweat, and a sensor analyzes that sweat to make an accurate B.A.C. measurement.
“Right now, the tattoo is designed for one-time use,” says Patrick Mercier, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California San Diego. “Place, detect, dispose.”
It’s not hard to see how a cheap, non-intrusive and effective way of determining a person’s B.A.C. could make roads safer. In addition to being made available to police, bars, college students, doctors and emergency responders could easily afford tattoos to help determine B.A.C. levels on the fly and possibly prevent someone from driving in the first place. Better yet, call Uber or Lyft or a taxi!
And given the number of DUI arrests in Chicago alone, this test could help greatly reduce the number of accidents. In 2015, the Chicago Police Department made 3,315 DUI Arrests. And Between 2003 and 2012, 3,866 people were killed in DUI related crashes in Illinois.
