Want to check if someone’s been driving after having a couple of drinks? A simple way would be to smell their breath, which can sometimes be masked by mints. Another more hi-tech way would be to deploy a breathalyzer, but what if the person did not drink? What if they were driving after smoking or shooting up drugs that won’t show up on a breathalyzer?

Thanks to a 13-year-old Krishna Reddy, he has come up with a rather simple tool that can detect drivers who are driving under the influence. Taking part in the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, Reddy came up with a contraption using a digital camera, a snakehead flashlight, and a toilet paper roll.

How does it work? The light from the flashlight is shone through the toilet paper roll which is held at the person’s eye. As the pupil contracts due to the light, the camera will then take a video of the pupil contracting. Through the use of a software program that Reddy also wrote, it will then measure the size of the constriction.

Based on the size, it will be able to tell if the person has taken drugs or even if they have been drinking, thus providing an alternative or an additional tool besides breathalyzers. Will this stop drivers driving under the influence? Probably not, but at the very least it will give cops a new tool at detecting those who are, and hopefully taking them off the road which can prevent potential accidents.

Filed in General. Read more about and .

Discover more from Ubergizmo

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading