From Sharktank To Drunktank

How cool is it to buy something “as seen on TV”! After all, if it’s on the telly, it must be real. Not necessarily? Fair enough. But if a Shark on TV buys into it, then it really, really must be real. After all, these are rich guys and they know stuff, right? And if all five sharks go for it, then it doesn’t get more real.

Except when it’s not.

Remember the Breathometer?

You have to admit, it’s a very cool idea. Test your sobriety on your iPhone. Tech plus tech means you’ll never get busted for drunk driving. Plus, you won’t kill babies. Always a plus. And it was available at an Amazon near you!

After the initial splash on the tube, TechCrunch took up the cause.

Breathometer wants to help reduce the number of drunk drivers there are on the road, thanks to a pocket-sized device that connects to your phone through its headphone jack and can guage your blood alcohol level. To do that, it’s $2 million in new funding and announced a whole new group of executives. The company raised $1 million from investors that include Structure Capital VC and Dillon Hill Capital, in addition to another $1 million that it got from the five “sharks” on that weird ABC show.

Don’t blame TechCrunch for being TechCrunch. Its job is to cheerlead technology, not vet it. Its obsession with start-up funding for new technologies is the draw, even if the technologies don’t work, don’t exist, aren’t remotely feasible. What matters is that some kids got some big money and can now eat something besides ramen and buy a Tesla.

But then comes the egg on the face moment.

Breathometer, a startup that quickly rose to prominence due to anappearance on Shark Tank, has agreed to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission in which it will offer refunds for mobile-connected breathalyzer devices the company sold from 2013 to 2015.

The two products — the Original ($49) and Breeze ($99) — were marketed as devices that could detect a user’s blood-alcohol content (BAC) in an effort to prevent them from driving drunk. (The company even worked with Uber to hail users a ride if their BAC level was too high.)

Even in abject defeat, TechCrunch can’t stop itself from being TechCrunch. Gotta love their spirit. So what went so disastrously wrong that this cool Uber-related startup had to give back all the loot it snarfed up? That darn Federal Trade Commission tested it.

The company claimed that “rigorous government lab-grade tests” proved the devices accurately measured a person’s blood alcohol content — implying the devices had been tested in a manner consistent with government criteria. The FTC says that is false.

So too is the claim that Breeze is a “law enforcement grade” breathalyzer, according to the FTC. What’s more, in most cases, Breathometer didn’t test to see whether Original could accurately detect a blood alcohol content of 0.08%, and its own data showed that Breeze gave inaccurately low results. Every state has laws that at 0.08% or above, a person is considered intoxicated.

Or, to put it more bluntly, it didn’t work. It claimed to be “law enforcement grade,” whatever that means given that there is no actual metric, but it didn’t even produce “shit-faced consumer” grade results.

The company has disabled the app, and the FTC’s proposed settlement with Breathometer and its founder and CEO, Charles Yim, requires them to contact people who bought these products and provide full refunds. So be on the lookout for a refund notice if you bought one.

Getting a refund is certainly the minimum to be expected of such a problem, such a company. Whether they have the ability to refund their sales may be in question, though no doubt the Sharks won’t want their reputation any more besmirched by this mutt of an app, so perhaps they’ll dig into their own pockets should the company have a shortfall.

Then again, if this app is like most apps, some fools bought it, used it once or twice and never touched it again. Getting a refund could involve effort, the drudgery of providing information and pressing a button. It’s likely way too much effort for some buyers, and others will be too drunk to care.

But what of the person who bought this app, believed that it really worked and took to the road, secure in the knowledge that their iPhone said they were sober enough to drive, only to see the lights behind them? What of the guy in the car you t-boned that you never saw coming, because you were singing Casey Jones at the top of your lungs, in no better voice than control of your reaction time?

There is no information that anyone got arrested because of their reliance on this app. There are no reports of people being killed or maimed either. Hopefully, none of this happened. But it could, because people believe in things, trust things, to actually do what they’re purported to do. Especially when it’s seen on TV.

Was this the worst idea ever when it came to enabling drunks to take to the road? Maybe not.

But before you start the ignition, you might want to consider some sound advice:

On the bright side, you only have to pay for the Tostitos to get this “solution.”

H/T Joe at MassPrivatel

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10 thoughts on “From Sharktank To Drunktank”

  1. the other rob

    As I type this, there is an Intoxilyzer 200 in a grey Pelican case on the floor to my right.

    Now I just need to find a lab that can calibrate it and a cop that’s old enough that he can show me how to operate it.

    2. PVanderwaart

      The Intoxilyzer 8000 which uses ” case law documented infrared spectroscopy”. Does that make it law enforcement grade?

    1. SHG Post author

      It works fine, provided you don’t expect an accurate BAC. Adding the bit of puffery, “law enforcement grade,” is an additional bit of lily-gilding.

      1. REvers

        It’s hardly puffery. “Law enforcement grade” breath machines don’t give you an accurate BAC, either.

        1. DaveL

          Yes, but in order to be “Law Enforcement Grade”, it’s not merely a matter of accuracy. They need to be inaccurate in a specific way, so as to provide sufficient false positives. The Breathometer, as the article states, understates BAC. What use is that to Law Enforcement?

  4. MonitorsMost

    How did we ever use PBTs before iPhones? Oh yeah, PBTs have screens telling you what the breath test result is. Like every single PBT in existence before this one had a built in screen for providing the results.

    So in top of not working, they somehow managed to create a product with less utility than all of its competitors.

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