We can stop drunk drivers with tech. Is Congress going to stand in the way?

A lot of people don’t know about this, because for some reason we’ve decided not to care about traffic safety (unless it can be used as an excuse to advance PR messaging for Waymo)…

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 “passive drunk driving detection” 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 don’t have to wait around for cars to become fully autonomous to take advantage of! But we keep doing this will-we-or-won’t-we routine, because at the end of the day, traffic safety isn’t a priority in the U.S.

Everyone kinda pretends that we solved drunk driving in the 1980s. I don’t 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 “spirits industry,” which is as evil as the firearms industry or any other industry in history.

We’re better than we used to be about drunk driving (which was REAL bad) but we’re 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 that’s 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. It’s 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 it’s 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. 😬

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, here’s the bad news! 😡 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 “kill switch.” “How dare the gub-er-ment get between me and my freedom to drive drunk!”

Ron DeSantis used Twitter recently to advance conspiracy that the “kill switch” 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 it’s sort of an open secret that drunk driving is winked at in Texas. I don’t think it’s just that state either!

This is a big opportunity to advance traffic safety and save lives. I just don’t want the pro safety side to not notice and miss this huge opportunity to actually do something.