Or rather, “have someone drive you home.”
After being vilified so much for contributing to dangerous roads (along with all other smartphones, of course), the iPhone will soon turn Samaritan, and maybe help to make the roads a little safer. That’s thanks to the new Breathometer, “the world’s first smartphone breathalyzer.”
Yesterday, we published extracts from a press release where PhantomAlert, an app that helps drivers avoid all kinds of potential tickets, boasted that its DUI checkpoints were staying put and that it had “defied” the senators who convinced Apple to ban DUI info.
CEO Joe Scott wrote to us, essentially retracting the whole release, also stating for the record that the company does not condone or encourage drinking and driving.
UPDATE: CEO Joe Scott retracted the statements made in the press release quoted below. That story is available here.
When Apple sidelined new apps that were tipping off tipsy drivers about DUI checkpoints, we wondered what would happen to the apps that were already in the iTunes store.
Some of them — like Trapster — pulled the DUI alerts while continuing to offer info on speed traps.
But PhantomALERT just issued a press release boasting about how it stayed in iTunes “defying” the senators who pressured Apple to ban apps with DUI checkpoint info.
Bowing to pressure from lawmakers after a recent U.S. senate hearing, Apple has updated the review guidelines to sideline new apps that might be seen as aiding drunk drivers.
Section 22.8 of the updated App Store Review Guidelines reads:
Apps which contain DUI checkpoints that are not published by law enforcement agencies, or encourage and enable drunk driving, will be rejected.
Some of the apps in question are, however, still available in iTunes for download.
iOS applications that alert drivers to DUI checkpoints and speed traps could soon be pulled from the App Store following a review by Apple that will determine whether or not these applications are illegal.
Guy Tribble, Apple’s Vice President of Software Technology, told senators during a U.S. Senate subcommittee yesterday that the company is currently looking into the legality of these applications, and will pull them if they are breaking the law.
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![PhantomALERT App: We aren’t “defying” senators or enabling DUIs [Exclusive]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Picture-31-e1308867595469.png "Picture 3")
