Breathalyzer phone apps

Yet another wonderful innovation has arrived to help those of us who enjoy having a drink or two (or five).  Thanks to an application for your smartphone, you now have the ability to check your blood alcohol levels wherever you happen to be.  This device has the potential to save plenty of lives and prevent you from ending up in jail.  Assuming you remember to use it, of course.

Named Alcohoot, it currently costs around $100 and uses a Bluetooth plug-in to talk to your phone.  You simply tell the Alcohoot the relevant information about yourself, blow into the device and then get the numbers back via your phone.  If you’re above the legal limit, the program goes even further and will offer you a chance to call a cab or provide the location of nearby open restaurants so you can find someplace to get something to eat and wait until you’re good to drive.  This automatic programming is a nice gentle nudge to get people going in the right direction when they might otherwise be contemplating whether they’re really too drunk to drive.

For a person drinking at their local bar, the BAC reader is certainly helpful in keeping them out of the driver’s seat, but if you happen to be new to a city or in an unfamiliar part of town enjoying a drink, the extra information can be invaluable in pointing you in the right direction. This further discourages people from thinking to themselves that they’ll “just drive back to the hotel.”

The young entrepreneur who developed it said that his interest in creating the app is not just as a money-maker, but that he wishes to address the problem of drunk driving and help to prevent the thousands of deaths that it causes each year.  But he’s not the only one trying to do this.  Other companies are already jumping on the bandwagon and no doubt we’ll be seeing these sorts of apps popping up all over the place soon.  That will have the added advantage of reducing the costs, of course, and one company I saw said they were going to be selling theirs (when it’s done) for at little as $20.

If you want to check out a short video of how the Alcohoot works, head on over to their home page and have a look.

Breathalyzer photo courtesy of Rsheram via Wikicommons