Testing and driving

http://www.startribune.com/business/122154669.html

Thought folks might be interested in this article about a technology in development.

Lora

Hello Lora:



I cannot think of ANYTHING that would be much worse than that idea frankly… diabetic kryptonite. No thanks not a prayer.

"…I will not show you the dashboard log… officer…"

"… I’m sorry what your honor ??? My dashboard readings are too low for your comfort…"



If no more accurate than the technology thats out there now… its not worth whatever they’ll try and charge for it.



You can have mine… (wg)

Stuart

Yeah Stuart I would have to agree with you on this. It would have its pros and cons, but the cons sure do out weigh the pros.

I think that’s an interesting idea.

I investigate car accidents for an insurance company, mostly dealing with personal injury claims, and I don’t see avoiding accidents as being bad in any way. If a meter tells you to stop driving, you should stop driving and knowing sooner is likely to be better than anything that might happen should it get to be “too late”. I think there may be risks to driving w/ diabetes that most of us don’t encounter but that could change quickly. I don’t think anything that alerts you that there can be a problem is a bad idea.

Acidrock, I do not have a problem with something like that existing. The issues I have is a company like medtronic would make a deal with the car company and push to make this mandatory for us D’s. It would then limit our choices in which cgm or pump to use. If they made it a universal type of product that would be one thing, but being limited to what car you could drive based on what cgm you use is a bit unrealistic. Also many D’s do not have the money for a cgm type of device. I maybe going a bit far with this scenario, but they do happen.

A neat partnership and display of technology, but I am not a fan. Can you say diabetes police? I can not imagine driving around a group of people and having my car display my BG. Much less having my car beep at me and tell me my BG is above my upper limit. And as Stuart mentioned, what about the police? Last time I got pulled over my adrenaline went crazy and my BG was soon to follow. Would medtronic or Ford keep a record of our driving BGs? Next thing I know is my insurance going to go up? This new tech has too many abuses and privacy invasions for my comfort.

The tendency that I have observed, a pretty small sample size, is that if a PWD has an issue driving, liability defenses (e.g. “my light was green”) go out the window. They let plenty of people in actuarially more risky groups drive and, without a clear, medical consensus as to what “number” would or wouldn’t constitute a reasonable degree of control, I see the chance of mandating some sort of “glucolyzer” as being impossible to legislate. There’s no motive for plaintiffs to bother. The sample size is too small.