Lifesaving Tech To Stop Impaired Drivers In New Vehicles Widely Supported

If technology that recognizes when drivers are dangerously impaired by alcohol or other causes and prevents them from driving were installed in every vehicle on the roads, thousands of lives could be saved every year. Most Americans support a new federal requirement that all new passenger vehicles be equipped with such systems.

That is the main take-away of new research published earlier this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open that measured public opinion about using mandatory technology to combat impaired driving.

“The report reinforces MADD’s strong belief that most people want to see this safety feature on new cars to prevent the senseless deaths and injuries caused by impaired driving,” Stacey D. Stewart, chief executive of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), said in a statement. The nonprofit endorsed the development.

“With historic increases in traffic deaths over the past three years, implementation of impaired driving prevention technology is urgently needed,” Stewart said.

The nationwide survey, “Public Support for Vehicle Technology to Prevent Operation by Impaired Drivers,” conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, found that nearly two-thirds of respondents, almost 65%, agreed that driving impairment prevention technology should be standard in all new vehicles. Systems would initially detect alcohol impairment, a leading killer on U.S. roadways, by detecting blood alcohol content and monitoring driving with cameras and sensors.

Every day about 32 people in the United States die in drunk-driving crashes — that’s one person every 45 minutes, according to federal data, for about a third of all traffic fatalities. In 2021, more than 13,000 people were killed in alcohol-related crashes and nearly 400,000 were injured, MADD noted.

Equipping all vehicles with alcohol-detection systems would save nearly 9,500 lives annually – about a quarter of fatalities, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found.

The prevention technology was mandated in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which requires that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) complete rule making for the technology by 2024. Automakers would then have up to three years to implement the new safety standard.

Known as the HALT Act — the Honoring the Abbas Family Legacy to Terminate (HALT) Drunk Driving Act — the provision was named for a Michigan family of five killed by a wrong-way drunk driver on January 6, 2019.

“If we seize this opportunity, we could put an end to one of the most persistent highway safety problems — impaired driving —” David Zuby, executive vice president and chief research officer at the Insurance Institute, said in a statement in response to the recent action by Congress.

“An impaired driving prevention requirement will be transformational for safety, but the transformation won’t happen overnight,” added Zuby, who is also a member of a technical working group of auto safety experts and consumer advocates. The group developed several principles “to ensure rapid, effective and equitable implementation of the mandate,” he said, like addressing alcohol-impaired driving first. Eventually, similar technology could detect and prevent a wide range of other risky driving, including impairment by other drugs, distracted and drowsy driving, speeding and no seat belt use.

But the ultimate solution – lowering and ideally eliminating the deadly toll of impaired driving – is in reach, the safety group said.

“Not everyone drives a brand new vehicle, so it will take decades for these systems to be universal even if Congress’ mandate is fulfilled,” Zuby said. “That means it’s way too early to cast aside other, more incremental approaches to reducing impaired driving. Solutions like sobriety checkpoints and other high-visibility enforcement campaigns, court-ordered interlocks, strict enforcement of 21 as the drinking age, and changing the legal definition of impairment to start at a BAC (blood alcohol content) of 0.05 percent have all been shown to make a difference.”

“Reducing the toll from crashes still requires us to do a lot of little things and likely always will,” Zuby added. “But our job will be much easier if we get this one big thing right.”

To access the full report, click here. For more information about the issue, click here and here.