12/13/2023

Regulators Want Cars to Include Drunk-driver Detection Tech

In 2021, more than 13,000 people died in US alcohol-related crashes

On Tuesday, the U.S. government took the first step toward requiring new cars to have technology that checks whether the driver is drunk.

At an event in Washington, D.C., officials with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the nation's top road safety regulator, said the technology could help prevent thousands of annual road deaths involving alcohol. Almost 13,400 people died in U.S. alcohol-related crashes in 2021 alone, NHTSA figures say.

The agency is still exploring how best to precisely detect and measure impairment in drivers and would seek multiple rounds of public input before creating any regulations to force automakers to include the feature. Industry and academic research has shown that it is possible to detect evidence of impairment using air sensors in a vehicle to recognize alcohol in a person's breath, touch sensors that look for alcohol in the blood or by a tracking driver's gaze or steering.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.