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Drink or drive, you must choose. However, tomorrow, it may be your phone that will allow you or not to take the wheel, according to a study conducted by a group of researchers from Stanford and Pittsburgh universities (United States) published in the “Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs ”.
This study involved 22 adult volunteers who each drank enough vodka to achieve a blood alcohol level of 0.2%, well above the 0.08% tolerated in the United States. They were then subjected to different exercises via the phyphox mobile application with a smartphone equipped with a three-axis accelerometer attached to the lower back.
In terms of methodology, the participants were first asked to take 10 steps back and forth while being sober. These data were then compared to the same post-drinking gait, performed 7 times in a row at one hour intervals, one operation each time followed by a breathalyzer test.
92.5% accuracy
The researchers then discovered that the accelerometer was able to identify intoxication by changes in the user’s gait with an accuracy of 92.5%. Staggering is in fact assimilated to being more or less drunk. Further research is already planned to further improve this score.
In the future, such a breakthrough could have a concrete impact on the daily life of motorists, at a time when more and more manufacturer applications allow you to open the door or start the engine of your car directly from your smartphone. . Being recognized as drunk could then temporarily block these features.
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