(Stock photo by Douglas Sacha/Getty Images)
Each year, there are somewhere around 40,000 traffic deaths with the vast majority involving drivers who are either speeding, impaired or both.
Discussions about what can be done to reduce traffic fatalities have been creeping along for a while. But there is more hope than ever before that measures to prevent driving while intoxicated will be in place before the end of this decade.
A provision in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed by Congress on Nov. 15, 2021, required the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to determine what technologies could be implemented to prevent intoxicated drivers from operating a vehicle.
The directive said any new regulation must follow the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, which requires proposed rules to be “reasonable, practicable, and reduce traffic crashes and associated deaths.”
The agency was given three years to present the new regulations, which would have been November 2024, or provide a reason why it can’t meet the deadline.
In 2022, there was an unsuccessful effort by three senators from South Dakota, Indiana, and Texas to repeal the mandate. Their bill never received a vote.
The infrastructure act required the traffic safety agency to determine what technologies could be used to detect driver impairment or measure blood alcohol levels and then, if they exceeded certain limits, prevent the vehicle from being driven or — if it was already moving — how the vehicle should respond.
At the end of 2023, the agency reported it had not reached any conclusions and continued to explore the best way to detect and measure driver impairment.
“Technical challenges, such as distinguishing between different impairment states, avoiding false positives, and determining appropriate prevention countermeasures still remain,” the agency wrote.
One of the bigger concerns involved false positives.
Ann Carlson, the agency’s then-acting director, said that even if the system is 99.9% accurate in detecting impaired drivers, that would generate a million false positives per day that prevent sober people from driving their vehicles.
Unfortunately, the agency did not meet its November 2024 deadline, making it unlikely for manufacturers to meet the goal of including this technology in vehicles produced in 2026 or even 2027. That’s very unfortunate.
Without a sufficiently long testing period, it would be a huge mistake to require the technology in new vehicles.
Even if testing started in early 2025, about two years would be needed for adequate testing and maybe another year to resolve any outstanding concerns. It could take two more years before manufacturers could build the technology into their vehicles.
All that said, we could possibly have vehicles with this new technology on the roads by the end of this decade.
Some of the technologies being considered include:
- Air sensors mounted in the steering wheel or on the dash to detect alcohol or carbon dioxide in a driver’s breath.
- Touch sensors, probably in the steering wheel, to determine blood alcohol content in capillaries directly below the skin.
- Erratic eye or head motion.
- Lane departure or erratic steering.
While there is little discussion about the detection of drug use by drivers, some have mentioned that erratic eye or head motion or lane departures or erratic steering could also be used for that purpose if those features are included in the new technology.
“Impaired driving crashes are 100% preventable — there’s simply no excuse or reason to drive impaired by alcohol or drugs,” Carlson said in a December 2023 news release from the traffic safety agency.
Despite this statement, there does not appear to be any mention of finding a way to prevent drugged driving in the regulations.
Questions frequently turn to ignition interlock devices, which require drivers to blow into a breathalyzer to start their vehicle.
They’re not new technology. Since 2014, South Carolina has required their installation in the vehicles of people repeatedly convicted of driving under the influence. The requirement in state law expanded last May to anyone convicted of DUI.
But requiring all drivers to breath into a tube every time they start their vehicle was widely seen as intrusive. The new safety feature must detect impairment without requiring any extra steps from the driver.
The law is very clear that the selected technology must “passively and accurately” monitor the driver’s blood-alcohol concentration.
Another question, perhaps the most frequently asked, is why must law-abiding citizens pay for these devices in their vehicles?
Some believe the government is overreaching and that, if they wanted to, an impaired driver would find some way around the technology.
Overall, reports seem to indicate good support from the general public, but some of that support may dwindle depending on what’s ultimately proposed. One would think technology to improve road safety would be warranted and welcomed by the public.
Unfortunately, that is not always the case.