NHTSA to consider drunk driving tech on new cars

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is considering requiring technology on new passenger vehicles to keep drunk drivers off the road.

In January, NHTSA issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking aimed at gathering the necessary information to develop performance requirements for the technology. The rulemaking would not apply to commercial motor vehicles.

The agency accepted comments for about two months and received about 18,000 comments.

Many of the comments were concerns about potential government overreach.

“This is a horrible idea,” Mark Megarity wrote. “Not only because there is no real defined mechanism but also because of the implications to drivers – meaning what about false indications.”

“I am against the imposition of a government-directed ‘Big Brother’ external control over personal-owned and operated vehicles,” David James wrote. “This is in my eyes an illegal search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

However, many commenters were supportive of any attempt to remove impaired drivers.

“I have worked with drunk driving victims for over 16 years,” Kristi Hosea wrote. “Nothing can prepare you for that call telling you that life as you know it is over. Nothing is ever the same. This technology is vital to saving lives. I urge you to move forward with the rulemaking process to end drunk driving.”

According to NHTSA, 13,384 people were killed in drunk driving crashes in 2021.

“Alcohol-impaired driving is a major cause of crashes and fatalities on America’s roadways,” the agency wrote in the 105-page notice. “NHTSA has been actively involved in addressing alcohol-impaired driving since the 1970s. Recent developments in vehicle technology present new opportunities to further reduce drunk and impaired driving crashes and fatalities or eliminate them altogether.”

Technological challenges

Although there are technologies with the potential to detect someone who is attempting to drive while drunk, drowsy or distracted, NHTSA acknowledged that there are challenges.

Those include being able to distinguish between impairment states, avoiding false positives and applying appropriate prevention countermeasures. The rulemaking doesn’t include drugged driving due to “technology immaturity and a lack of testing protocols.”

Congress directed NHTSA to initiate the rulemaking as part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The law says that NHTSA should issue a new regulation only if it meets the requirements of the National Traffic Motor Vehicle Safety Act, which states that a proposed standard “must be reasonable, practicable and reduce traffic crashes and associated deaths.”

The comment period for the advance notice ended Tuesday, March 5. Now, NHTSA will review the comments before determining if it will move forward with a formal proposal. LL