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HALT Impaired Driving Alliance
Objective:
Accelerate equitable policy change and rulemaking capability to implement evidence-based technology in cars that will eliminate impaired driving. Driver impairment by alcohol or drugs is a chronic public health crisis, killing more than 13,000 people in 2022 in the U.S. An unprecedented and ambitious new federal mandate included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (signed into law on November 15, 2021) could reduce impaired driving deaths by more than 10,000 annually by requiring that all new passenger vehicles be equipped with driver impairment detection technology as early as 2027. In-vehicle impairment detection technology is recognized by safety and health experts as having the potential to break through barriers to progress and make substantial further gains in reducing drunk driving deaths. Such technology has been in development since 2008 under a research program jointly funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the auto industry.
One of these technologies is a breath measurement device that can accurately gauge impairment by sampling air in the vicinity of the driver, and the other is a transdermal device that can measure blood alcohol content through the skin when the driver touches the start button or other vehicle controls. Researchers predict that the devices will be ready for consumer use in 2024. 5 Additionally, experts predict that driver monitoring systems, some of which are already available in cars, could also prevent crashes due to driver impairment. 6 The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) estimates that if fitted on all new cars and fully implemented, impaired driving prevention systems could save more than 10,000 lives per year. Reductions of this magnitude in drunk driving deaths are not matched by other interventions, prompting our focus on impairment detection technology as one of our strategies for ending impaired driving for good. 8
“Every moment that goes by that we need to consider this [technology], is another life or lives that we lose to a drunk or impaired driver.”
Rana Abbas Taylor Sister | Aunt | Sister-in-Law Issam, Rima, Ali, Isabella, and Giselle Abbas Killed by a drunk driver on January 6, 2019
5. Enhancing Vehicle Technology to Prevent Drunk Driving. 116th U.S. Congress. (2019) 6. Bellan, R. (2021, Aug 5). Drunk driving provision could fuel demand for driver monitoring technology. TechCrunch 7. Farmer, C. (2021) Lives saved by in-vehicle alcohol detection systems. Traffic Injury Prevention. 10. 1080-15389588.2020.1836366.2020/11/12 8. Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The path to zero: Campaign to eliminate drunk driving. Accessed on March 2, 2022 12
Mothers Against Drunk Driving ®
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