We can stop drunk drivers with tech. Is Congress going to stand in the way?
These Congresspeople who are moving forward with this pro-drunk driving amendment should be ashamed.
A lot of people donât know about this, because for some reason weâve decided not to care about traffic safety (unless it can be used as an excuse to advance PR messaging for Waymo)âŚ
But something huge happened in traffic safety quietly a few years back. As part of the Infrastructure Bill, someone (a hero and a responsible adult: Laura Gillen (D-NY-04), Mike Lawler (R-NY-17) and Debbie Dingell (D-MI-06)) inserted language that would require âpassive drunk driving detectionâ in all new cars. NHTSA was given five years to work out the details.
What is passive drunk driving detection? Well, vehicle tech is so advanced now that it can tell if the driver is smashed! Amazing, right? (Yes, yes it is.) Passive drunk driving detection, what it does is if a driver is inebriated, it basically picks up on it through a detection system mounted in the steering wheel that measures BAC using your breath. Or it detects BAC when you touch the start button. The car simply will not start if the driver is wasted.
We have the ability to do this now with tech: stop drunk drivers BEFORE they kill someone. There is a lot of stuff like this now! On-the-shelf tech that we donât have to wait around for cars to become fully autonomous to take advantage of! But we keep doing this will-we-or-wonât-we routine, because at the end of the day, traffic safety isnât a priority in the U.S.
Everyone kinda pretends that we solved drunk driving in the 1980s. I donât want to diminish what MADD did back then, which was amazing. But broader structural reforms (like a subsidized cab service paid for by a tax on liquor sales) were quashed by the âspirits industry,â which is as evil as the firearms industry or any other industry in history.
Weâre better than we used to be about drunk driving (which was REAL bad) but weâre FAR from having solved the issue. Drunk driving kills more 10,000 Americans every year! Massive, massive social harm. About one-in-three traffic deaths is alcohol related in a typical year and thatâs just the ones we know about! (Hit and runs, I think, many people think, are VERY VERY often drunk driving cases. And there are a lot of hit-and-runs.)
Also, drunk (and high!) driving has gotten worse since the pandemic. Itâs bad out there. In my city, Cleveland, just based on my read of the traffic data and what I hear from other people who look closely at it itâs maybe the top problem. A big share of our fatalities are people who crash into a fixed object, like a tree or a utility poll, late at night. đŹ
Traffic calming and street redesign, the preferred corrective for dangerous driving in my niche field, only goes so far when someone is inebriated. Which is why I was excited AF that we were going to use this amazing new tech that is available to fight this social scourge.
Now, hereâs the bad news! đĄ Some quack/hack/shock jock (probably some kind of front for the beverage industry, or a secret society of drunk driving politicians) invented some kind of dumb fake controversy where they called this measure a âkill switch.â âHow dare the gub-er-ment get between me and my freedom to drive drunk!â
Ron DeSantis used Twitter recently to advance conspiracy that the âkill switchâ would allow the government to remotely stop all cars. Kelly Blue Book has a good overview of the controversy here. House Republicans have swung into action to protect drunk drivers, I mean (cough cough) privacy!!!
Now a measure is picking up steam that would strip this requirement out of the latest transportation bill that is moving forward. I have been watching this with concern. MADD is now reporting that an amendment that would do this, block passive drunk driving detection from becoming standard in new vehicles, just passed the House Appropriations Committee. This cannot be allowed to continue.
This measure is sponsored by Rep. Michael Cloud, of Texas.
Cloud: Standing up for drunk drivers!
We cannot them get away with this.
I was told by some knowledgable people in Texas, which I just visited, that itâs sort of an open secret that drunk driving is winked at in Texas. I donât think itâs just that state either!
This is a big opportunity to advance traffic safety and save lives. I just donât want the pro safety side to not notice and miss this huge opportunity to actually do something.
I'm really torn on this proposal. If drunk driving is indeed 1/3 of vehicle deaths each year, simply keeping them from driving until sober would be a quick hit for traffic safety. I have friends in the UK, relatives in Germany, and I know that drunk driving is treated far more harshly in those countries than in the US. That fits with the German ethos of "yes you can drive 150 mph on the Autobahn but to drive here you have to pass this rigorous driver training and license testing, and if you drive impaired we yank your license right now..." I live in Wisconsin, which for a long time had a rather casual approach to drunk driving before finally beginning to show some teeth around the issue. I am currently in Texas, and I'm not surprised that the state has a casual attitude about drinking and driving. Despite some HUGE cities the state has a lot of rural areas with long distances between home and the nearest town bar. If your car won't let you drive because you had a drink or two a lot of people would be seriously inconvenienced. Some of those will be truly impaired, the ones that ought to be kept immobile until they sober up. Some will be mildly impaired and wou ld make it home just fine, barely more of a threat than if they were sober.
I do have a serious concern about the added tech in a car. After 12 years in a mid-teens Outback we just bought a new car. I'm a bit staggered by the level of...intervention the car seems capable of. It's outright annoying when the car decides to yank on the steering in its sincere belief that it's keeping me in lane when actually I'm trying to change lanes. The car updates its software over the air without my intervention. Ron Desantis is being alarmist (or his usual cynical self), but he's not wrong: the government probably could, if they really wanted to, grab control of your car. In fact competent hackers could probably do the same. Dirty little secret about the "driver aids" that have become so popular in recent years. I'm old-school on all this. Beyond traction control and ABS brakes leave me the f**k alone. I know how to drive, I take it seriously.
Back to the built-in "breathalyzer". I suppose it could work. Some states mandate an add-on device for people with drunk driving convictions; has to be better than those. I'm willing to make a trade: breatalyzer in the steering wheel if you cn take out the lane-keeping tech. Oh, and some journalist ought to do a deep dive on that Texas legislator. It's likely he either has a bit of a drinking issue or is having an affair that involves some wine-soaked dinners. No, he definitely doesn't want his car immobilized because he's been drinking....