My own experience dictates... (Score 1, Insightful)

Almost any step taken to reduce and penalize those who would choose to drive drunk or while intoxicated would be an improvement. Just over two years ago, I lost my newlywed wife of 110 days to a drunk driver who drove against traffic on a highway, at highway speeds himself. I'm not after pity or blood, but it'd be great to know that there's SOMETHING we can do to help stop drunks from getting behind the wheel and killing people and maiming them [ my leg was also broken fairly severely in the accident ]. I can't go into tons of detail for pending legal issues, but this involved a fairly unrepentant repeated drunken driver with multiple offenses in multiple states. This may not seem like a real problem to you, but I'm a fellow geek, 29, with my hopes and dreams of a long life with a great wife dashed by the careless, wreckless, wantonly disrespectful to life choices made by a person who should not have had a car after drinking and driving so repeatedly. Taking a license isn't enough, as it wasn't with him. Taking a car could possibly result in him taking another car. However, if cars were all equipped with anti-start technology as described and has been available for some time, accidents caused by people like that could be sometimes averted, because it would make it much harder to actually get in what amounts to a lethal weapon in the hands of those not mentally or physically able to handle it correctly. Keep in mind the same normal people who might have to pay marginally more for a car, or for a retrofit would also gain the societal benefit of fewer drunks on the road and potentially longer lives and fewer losses like mine. This is not pie in the sky ideas, but a very real proposition that could do real good with a minimal impact to population. That to me seems like a real societal good. I'm not advocating trading liberty for security, I'm trading a small payment for some sense of it.