A Federal law The requirement for fault detection devices inside all new cars survived a recent campaign to withdraw their funding, but remains stalled by questions about whether technology ready.
Rana Abbas Taylor lost her sister, brother-in-law, nephew and two nieces when a driver had a blood alcohol level nearly four times the legal limit It collided with their car In January 2019, a Michigan family was driving through Lexington, Kentucky, on their way home from a vacation in Florida.
The tragedy turned Abbas Taylor into an outspoken advocate for stopping more than 10,000 people Alcohol-related deaths Every year on American roads. Lawmakers attached the Abbas Family Legacy to End Drunk Driving Act to the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill signed by then-President Joe Biden in 2021.
The measure, often referred to as the Stop Drunk Driving Act, predicts that as early as this year, car companies will be required to roll out technology to “passively” detect when… Drunk drivers Or people who are disabled and prevent their cars from starting. Regulators can choose from a range of options, including air monitors that scan a car’s interior for traces of alcohol, fingertip readers that measure a driver’s blood alcohol level, or scanners that detect signs of impairment in eye or head movements.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving called it the most important legislation in the organization’s 45-year history. However, implementation has faltered organizational delay, Without any clear signs that final approval is approaching.
“The way we measure time is not in days, months or years,” Abbas Taylor said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It is in the number of lives lost.” “So when we hear manufacturers say: ‘We need more time,’ or ‘The technology isn’t ready,’ or ‘We’re not there yet,’ all we hear is: ‘More people need to die before we’re ready to fix this.'”
A Republican-led effort to defund the moratorium law was defeated in the U.S. House of Representatives last month by a vote of 268 to 164. Another bill to completely repeal it is awaiting a committee vote.
Most of the opposition arose from suggestions that the law would require manufacturers to equip cars with “Kill switch.” This would essentially allow them to “be subject to government control,” as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis posted on social platform X, comparing it to George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”
The alcohol industry has strongly defended the law against such arguments. It specifically requires the technology to be passive, similar to other current safety requirements such as seat belts and airbags, said Chris Swonger, president and CEO of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.
“There is no switching, there is no government control, there is no data sharing,” he said. “This is just an unfortunate scare tactic.”
But Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, who authored the defunding effort, said that even a dashboard that works alone can serve as “your judge, jury and executioner.” He cited the example of a mother who swerved in a snowstorm to avoid hitting a neighbor’s pet, only for her car to disable itself because it determined she was disabled.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade association for US automakers, made a similar argument to regulators in 2024, arguing that more research is needed before the technology is mandated.
“Even if 1 in 10,000 trips were expected to experience a false positive, this could result in thousands of non-impaired drivers facing problems that prevent them from driving every day,” the coalition wrote.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which sets rules to implement the STOP law, told the AP in an email that it is still “evaluating the development of technologies for potential deployment” and expects to submit a report to Congress soon. Even supporters expect the agency will delay the decision at least until 2027, and auto companies still have another two or three years to nail it.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research arm funded by auto insurance companies, recently announced that defect detection and other technologies aimed at reducing risky driving behavior will soon be included as criteria for a vehicle to receive one of its highest safety awards.
Many states already have laws requiring breath-activated ignition interlock systems to be installed on the vehicles of drunk driving offenders. The system ultimately chosen under the STOP law aims to detect impairment that goes beyond just drunk driving.
“We’re still kind of resisting this narrative that the technology doesn’t exist,” said Stephanie Manning, chief government affairs officer at MADD. “We’ve seen many different types of technology that can solve the problem of drunk driving. But we haven’t seen it deployed and implemented in the way we would like.”
To speed up the timeline, a bill before Congress offers a $45 million prize to whoever can produce and deploy the first consumer-ready piece of technology. Abbas Taylor, whose family members were killed in the Kentucky crash, said such efforts give her hope.
“When you lose everything, there is nothing that will stop you from fighting for what is right,” she said. “But we see the writing on the wall, and we know it’s only a matter of time before this happens.”