Feeling tipsy? New apps read blood alcohol levels, hail a taxi

September 17, 2013 Leave a comment

Feeling tipsy? New apps read blood alcohol levels, hail a taxi

3:14pm EDT

By Natasha Baker

TORONTO (Reuters) – Before getting behind the wheel after a night out, a driver can test his blood alcohol level with new apps that not only give a reading but can call a cab. Breathometer, for iPhones and Android smartphones, and BACtrack, for iPhones, display a user’s blood alcohol level within seconds on smartphone-connected breathalyzers. “People think, ‘Oh, I’m driving around the corner,’ but it’s not until they get pulled over that they realize they’re over the limit,” said Charles Michael Yim, chief executive of Breathometer, based in Burlingame, California. More than 1.2 million people were arrested in the United States in 2011 for driving under the influence of alcohol, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data.Yim said his company’s aim is to prevent drunk driving by raising awareness of alcohol levels and enabling drivers to make smarter decisions.

The Breathometer plugs into a smartphone’s headphone jack, and the user blows on the device. The BACtrack connects to the iPhone via Bluetooth. Both use sensors that meet U.S. Food and Drug Administration standards and can detect blood alcohol levels with accuracy within 0.01 percent, according to the companies.

Breathalyzers have been around since the 1950s. By pairing them with smartphones and making them smaller and more cost effective, more people will be able to use them, Yim said.

“We are catering to a completely different audience that wouldn’t have considered buying one before,” he said.

Breathometer’s breathalyzer is the size of a car key and fits into a pocket or on a key chain. The app can detect a user’s GPS location, order a cab if the user can’t drive home, and estimate how long it will take for the user to become sober.

“Just checking blood alcohol levels can help you be more aware of your body. If you blow 0.02 percent or 0.04 percent you might think, ‘I better stop drinking,'” Yim said.

In all 50 U.S. states, a blood alcohol level above 0.08 percent is considered drunk driving. The National Transportation Safety Board is recommending the limit be reduced to 0.05 percent. More than 10,000 people died in drunk driving accidents in the United States in 2010, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The Breathometer app reads signals after the user has blown into the breathalyzer. An ethanol sensor embedded in the device detects alcohol on the breath and converts this into a signal, which the app processes.

The app, which costs $49, will be released worldwide in October on the Internet and in stores the following month.

San Francisco-based BACtrack, founded in 2001, was the first company to receive U.S. government clearance to sell breathalyzers for personal use. Its breathalyzer, which includes a mouthpiece, costs $150.

The app also tracks a user’s drinking habits in a graph, and can estimate when a user’s blood alcohol level will return to zero. Users can also share their blood alcohol levels through text message, Facebook or Twitter.

“It’s not about whether you’re at 0.05 or 0.08 percent. If you even have 0.01 percent you should not be driving,” said Yim.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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