Gallery
Experiment overview
A speculative design concept exploring alternative approaches to drunk driving prevention by combining sensor technology with mechanisms of social accountability.
Instead of relying solely on police control or automated vehicle shutdown systems, the project proposes a visible feedback mechanism that transforms private intoxication into a shared safety signal, enabling community members to respond and intervene.
Main objectives
The project reimagines drunk driving prevention as a collective responsibility by introducing a steering wheel cover equipped with skin-contact and breath sensors. When alcohol is detected, the cover illuminates in an intense red light, making impaired driving immediately visible to passengers, pedestrians, and surrounding drivers.
The aim was to shift the narrative from punishment and surveillance toward shared awareness, moral pressure, and collective care, questioning where responsibility truly lies in public safety systems.
Outcomes
The concept sparked discussion around the ethics and effectiveness of merging technological detection with social intervention.
Visual sketches developed in collaboration with Bartosz Tytus Trojanowski e helped translate the speculative system into realistic scenarios, enabling audiences to imagine its presence within everyday urban environments.
By repositioning community members as active participants rather than passive witnesses, the project challenged dominant models of prevention grounded solely in institutional control.
Main reflection
This experiment revealed how simple design interventions can significantly reshape social dynamics around risky behavior.
Its strength lies not in technological complexity, but in its capacity to expose what is usually hidden, converting private decision-making into visible social information and activating accountability through transparency.