Coming soon to a police checkpoint near you

Driving home late at night can be a scary experience: as drunk driving is on the rise, we find ourselves wondering: are those erratic cars weaving through traffic all drunk, or just reckless drivers? But fear not: Shanghai Daily informs us of a new invention in the works at Shanghai's Jiao Tong University that will help Shanghai's crackdown on drunk driving.

The invention is a little cap that can read a driver's brain waves, analyze them, and signal the police whether or not the driver is too drunk or tired to drive. If it works, it will revolutionize breathalyzers, and we're pretty confident it will quickly surpass its low-tech brethren as the ultimate party necessity.

Though it won't be completed for another two years, the police are down with the idea: it looks like it's difficult for them to get drunk drivers to take breathalyzer tests. Traffic cop Yu Dalei says "If drivers are unwilling to exhale in the alcohol breath tests, there's nothing we can do." We thought the police had a bit more power, you know, like at least being able to arrest people who resist them? Then again, a traffic cop is a traffic cop, but it's just silly to leave them powerless against drunk drivers.

There is an even grander idea in the works of installing this device into new cars, which could stop automatically if the driver was too impaired to drive. Hopefully these inventions will help todiscourage drunk driving around Shanghai and China, so we can all breathe a little easier on those late night cab rides, which are already life threatening enough as it is.