Mandatory driver impairment sensors clear a funding hurdle, but are they ready?

A federal law requiring deficiency detection devices inside all new cars survived a recent attempt to defund it, but remains stalled by questions about whether the technology is ready.

Rana Abbas Taylor lost her sister, brother-in-law, nephew and two nieces when a driver with a blood-alcohol level almost four times the legal limit crashed into their car in January 2019 as the Michigan family was driving through Lexington, Kentucky, on their way home from a vacation in Florida.

The tragedy made Abbas Taylor a staunch advocate for stopping the more than 10,000 alcohol-related deaths on America’s roads each year. Lawmakers attached the Honoring Abbas Family Legacy to Terminate Drunk Driving Act to the $1 trillion infrastructure law that then-President Joe Biden signed into law in 2021.

The measure, often called the Halt Drunk Driving Act, said that starting this year, automakers would be required to deploy technology to “passively” detect when drivers are drunk or impaired and prevent their cars from rolling. Regulators can choose from a range of options, including air monitors that sample the car’s interior for traces of alcohol, fingertip readers that measure the driver’s blood alcohol content, or scanners that detect signs of impaired eye or head movements.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving called it the most important piece of legislation in the organization’s 45-year history. Yet implementation has been hampered by regulatory delays, with no clear sign that final approval is near.

“We don’t measure time in days or months or years. It’s in the number of lives lost,” Abbas Taylor said in an interview with The Associated Press. “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 have to die before we’re ready to solve this problem.’ »

A Republican-led effort to defund the Halt Act was defeated in the House of Representatives last month by a vote of 268 to 164. Another bill to repeal it entirely awaits a committee vote.

Most of the opposition has come from suggestions that the law would require manufacturers to equip cars with a “kill switch.” This would essentially allow them “to be controlled by the government,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis posted on the social platform X, drawing comparisons to George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”

The alcohol industry has fiercely defended the law against such arguments. Chris Swonger, president and CEO of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, said this specifically requires the technology to be passive, like other current safety mandates such as seat belts and airbags.

“There is no change, there is no government control, there is no data sharing,” he said. “It’s just an unfortunate scare tactic.”

But Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who spearheaded the defunding effort, said even the scoreboard acting alone could serve as “your judge, jury and executioner.” He cited the example of a mother who swerves in a snowstorm to avoid hitting a neighbor’s pet, but her car automatically disables because she determines she is impaired.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade association for U.S. automakers, made a similar argument to regulators in 2024, arguing that much more research was needed before mandating the technology.

“Even if one in 10,000 trips is expected to result in a false positive, this could lead to thousands of healthy drivers facing problems that prevent them from driving every day,” the Alliance wrote.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which sets the rules for implementing the Halt Act, told the AP in an email that it is “still evaluating developing technologies for potential deployment” and plans to report to Congress soon. Even supporters predict the agency will delay the decision until at least 2027, and automakers will have another two to three years to implement it.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research organization funded by auto insurers, recently announced that impairment detection and other technologies aimed at reducing risky driving behaviors would soon be included among the criteria for a vehicle to win one of its highest safety awards.

Many states already have laws requiring breath-activated ignition interlock systems to be installed on the cars of DUI offenders. The system ultimately chosen under the Halt Act aims to detect impairment beyond simple drunk driving.

“We kind of continue to push back against this narrative that the technology doesn’t exist,” said Stephanie Manning, director of government affairs at MADD. “We’ve seen many different types of technologies that can solve the problem of drunk driving. We just haven’t seen them deployed and implemented the way we would like.”

To speed up the timeline, a bill introduced in Congress would offer a $45 million prize to anyone who can produce and deploy the first consumer-ready technology. Abbas Taylor, whose family members were killed in the Kentucky crash, said such efforts give him hope.

“When you have lost everything, nothing will stop you from fighting for what is right,” she said. “But we see what’s happening on the wall and we know it’s only a matter of time before it happens.”