Kisai breathalyser smart-watch: wrist-bound risk assessment

Kisai, a Tokyo, Japan-based gadget manufacturer, has a line of smart wrist watches that shame regular watches . The latest from the company, the Kisai Intoxicated, now includes a breathalyser to tell you how drunk you are and allow to you to moderate your alcohol intake.

Breathalysers are pretty useful. They measure the content of the air you breathe out of your lungs and search for traces of ethanol. By measuring your ethanol intoxication level against a set range of results, these little machines can give you a close, but not accurate, approximation of how much alcohol has been absorbed into your blood stream.

Having a breathalyser on you, then, seems like a great idea. Not only could you use it to measure how drunk you are, but you can also use it on friends and family, and prove to the person sitting next to you at the bar that they should really give you their keys and arrange a taxi. The watch uses an infra-red sensor to measure the level of ethanol in your breath, a common technique for cheap electronic breathalysers.

However, I don’t think this was designed by people who actually drink. You see, the problem is that drunk people don’t always know they’re drunk. Likewise, if you tell them that they’re drunk, they won’t believe you until they’ve wound up in a fight and are now lying on the floor. Giving someone who drinks to get drunk a breathalyser-watch might be a bad idea because it then becomes a mini-game to see how high you can push up your score.

I’m also intimately familiar with that exact scenario (and so is Tucker Max). Nevertheless, the Kisai Intoxicated is a great idea for the people who’ll actually use it sensibly. It will get a lot of use by the people it’s undoubtedly designed for, but there’s the chance that if you’re drunk enough, you’re going to lose it anyway.

The watch design was finalised in a competition run by Tokyoflash Design Studio. It also has a mini-game that uses built-in accelerometers to measure your reflexes – and it can even tell you the time! The Kisai Intoxicated is currently on sale for $99 but is out of stock already.