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From NBC Bay Area
this is Today in the Bay.
Scott McGrew--always good advice, and you have a gadget to prove it.
We were talking about this earlier about drinking and driving. When it comes to
driving it's best to leave it to non-drinkers --even if you're going to have just one glass
of wine.
Get a designated driver. That said, our gadget this Gadget Friday
is a personal breathalyzer
that works with your iPhone. It's almost the exact same size as a Zippo
lighter for those of you old enough to remember.
It's called BACtrack (blood alcohol content). Runs on a rechargeable battery. There's a
tube in the upper right hand side--you get the idea. You blow, much like you
see on the TV show "Cops," until you get a beep on your iPhone. And then your
level of inebriation is displayed right on your phone. It uses a fuel cell just
like a police breathalyzer--
same sort of technology.
Weirdly enough, you can share your results on Facebook and Twitter. This is a
map of people using the device
in the San Francisco. The purple and the reds are the more impaired
people,
the greens, there are a whole group of them there, uh... absolutely staying sober.
yeah
Now the way I see it, if you're impaired,
you are impaired after the very first sip.
Remember, you can be arrested for impaired driving even if your under
the limit of point 0.08%. Bottom-line don't use this to see if you
are safe to drive because if you're using it, you probably shouldn't be driving anyway.
Now, for science
we did test it out.
The instructions say you have to wait a half an hour before actually blowing into it.
I will give it credit. I had a glass of wine and blew right into
it and it actually set off some alarms, said, "hey you need some medical help."
It misread my alcohol level. WOMAN: Where's that video? MAN: Was that this morning, Scott?
SCOTT: Yes, it was just a few minutes ago. Ha ha.
And you can see the slow curve, it was very educational. Someone
who is much bigger than me, someone much smaller--way different readings.
That was educational.
WOMAN: That would be interesting to see. SCOTT: Meet you at my desk.
MAN: Cheers to the weekend!