Your finger’s all sweaty, you been drinking tonight?

Fingerprint-system-to-prevent-drunk-drivingA couple of grad students in China have developed a method for testing someone’s blood alcohol level directly from a middle finger. The system consists of a small box mounted inside of a car, connected to the vehicle’s ignition.

A would-be motorist sticks his or her swear finger into the box for twenty seconds and the system first checks the fingerprint to identify the driver and then checks sweat coming off of the finger for the person’s blood alcohol level. If it’s above the legal limit, the car won’t start. So the payoff is really two-fold: one layer of security and one layer of safety.

The system was developed in cooperation with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Cambridge and it’ll likely be implemented to attempt to cut down on the 250,000+ drunk driving accidents in China each year.

[via Wired]