New Year’s Eve: Will new cars have passive alcohol detection systems?

Impaired driving prevention

How a crash on New Year’s Day 2021 has led to attempts to equip vehicles with blood alcohol monitoring systems.

On Friday Jan. 1, 2021, a sport utility vehicle was traveling near Avenal in central California while a pickup truck — occupied by a driver and seven passengers, ranging in age from 6 to 15 years old — was traveling north on State Route 33. The SUV accelerated to a speed between 88 and 98 mph, then it ran off the shoulder to the right. The driver overcorrected to the left and the SUV crossed the centerline into the other lane, directly in front of the oncoming pickup truck. The SUV and pickup truck collided head-on and the truck immediately caught fire. The SUV driver and all eight (seven children) pickup truck occupants died.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators found that the SUV driver had a high level of alcohol intoxication and was operating at an excessive speed. The issues of impaired driving and excessive speeding are both on the NTSB’s Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements.

“Technology could’ve prevented this heartbreaking crash — just as it can prevent the tens of thousands of fatalities from impaired driving and speeding-related crashes we see in the U.S. annually,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. “We need to implement the technologies we have right here, right now to save lives.”​

With all the public service announcements and money spent on education and prevention, alcohol-related fatalities in the U.S. have increased over the past several years. The NTSB pushed legislation in the Investment and Infrastructure and Jobs Act (of 2021) that new vehicles sold in the U.S., as soon as 2026, to be equipped with passive alcohol detection systems. Passive alcohol detection systems are still in the developmental stages.

The Department of Transportation is allowed to extend the period for mandatory implementation of these sensors, if technically necessary.Several legal groups such as the ACLU have voiced concern over how the data from these systems would be used.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says on its website that “in order to be considered for widespread deployment, the Driver Alcohol Detection System technology must be seamless, accurate, and precise, and unobtrusive to the sober driver. It must also be proven reliable to be installed in the vehicle fleet and publicly favorable.”

Unlike the systems currently mandated by states for drivers convicted of DUI offenses, which require them to breathe into a tube before starting their vehicles, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and 17 automakers have been developing and testing a passive breath test and a touch-based system that uses infrared light to measure the blood alcohol level through the skin as part of the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety program.

These systems would work by continually monitoring the alcohol level of the driver with sensors located near the steering wheel.

The system would constantly monitor the driver’s breath in an unobtrusive manner.

If the unit detects an elevated blood alcohol content level, the vehicle will become inoperable.

Percentage of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities in 2020

Alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities were highest in Texas (1,495), followed by California (1,159) and Florida (871), and lowest in the District of Columbia (7).

The percentage of alcohol-impaired-driving fatalities among total traffic fatalities in states ranged from a high of 45% (Montana) to a low of 21% (the District of Columbia, Mississippi and Utah), compared to the national average of 30%.

Of the 42,514 traffic fatalities in 2022, there were an estimated 13,524 people (32%) killed in alcohol-impaired-driving crashes.

The number of people killed in the U.S. by alcohol-related accidents in 2022 is more than 46 fully-loaded Boeing 757s (289 passengers each).

Cannabis: As of April 2023, 38 U.S. states had legalized medical marijuana and 23 had legalized its recreational use. It’s illegal everywhere to drive impaired by the drug.

Sources: University of Indiana; California Department of Motor Vehicles; MADD, NTSB, The Associated Press, Driver Alcohol Detection System