High Schoolers’ AI-Enabled Device Deters Drunk Driving

Accidents happen, but not all of them are inevitable. Drunk driving is one of the deadliest and most preventable causes of roadway fatalities. In 2022 alone, more than 13,000 people died in alcohol-related vehicular crashes in the United States, accounting for nearly a third of all traffic deaths, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Now a group of high school students in North Carolina is taking action with SoberRide, an AI-enabled device they designed to prevent intoxicated people from driving.

Breathalyzer-based ignition interlocks are already in use; they require the driver to blow into a device, proving they are sober enough to drive. However, these interlocks are not foolproof because someone other than the driver could breathe into them, trying to outsmart the device.

SoberRide uses a combination of cameras, sensors, and machine-learning algorithms to detect signs of alcohol impairment in the driver—such as pupil dilation, bloodshot eyes, and the presence of ethanol used in alcoholic beverages—before allowing a vehicle to be put into drive.

“We’ve been training our neural network to classify intoxication, refining the system’s ability to reliably sense whether someone is drunk or sober,” says Swayam Shah, chief executive officer and cofounder of SoberRide. He’s an 11th-grader at Enloe Magnet High School, in Raleigh.

The SoberRide team presented its invention at the MIT Undergraduate Research Technology Conference in October, sponsored by groups like the IEEE University Partnership Program and IEEE Women in Engineering.

The students also showcased their technology at another IEEE-supported event: the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Communication, held in December in Xiamen, China.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/students-device-deters-drunk-driving