Federal law would stop the cars of drunk or impaired drivers, but it isn't happening yet

A federal law requiring impairment-detection devices inside all new cars survived a recent push to strip its funding but remains stalled by questions about whether the technology is ready.

Rana Abbas Taylor lost her sister, brother-in-law, nephew and two nieces when a driver with a blood-alcohol level almost four times the legal limit slammed into their car in January 2019 as the Michigan family drove through Lexington, Kentucky, on the way home from a Florida vacation.

The tragedy turned Abbas Taylor into an outspoken advocate for stopping the more than 10,000 alcohol-related deaths each year on U.S. roads. Lawmakers attached the Honoring Abbas Family Legacy to Terminate Drunk Driving Act to the $1 trillion infrastructure law that then-President Joe Biden signed in 2021.

The measure, often referred to as the Halt Drunk Driving Act, anticipated that as early as this year, auto companies would be required to roll out technology to ''passively'' detect when drivers are drunk or impaired and prevent their cars from operating. Regulators can choose from a range of options, including air monitors that sample the car's interior for traces of alcohol, fingertip readers that measure a driver's blood-alcohol level, or scanners that detect signs of impairment in eye or head movements.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving called it the most important piece of legislation in the organization's 45-year history. Still, implementation has been bogged down by regulatory delays, without any clear signals that final approval is near.

''The way we measure time is not by days or months or years. It's by number of lives lost,'' Abbas Taylor said in an interview with The Associated Press. ''So when we hear manufacturers say, ‘We need more time,' or ‘The tech is not ready,' or ‘We're not there yet,' all we hear is, ‘More people need to die before we're willing to fix this.'''

The ‘kill switch' debate

Most of the opposition has stemmed from suggestions that the law would require manufacturers to equip cars with a ''kill switch". That would essentially allow them to ''be controlled by the government,'' Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis posted on the social platform X, drawing comparisons to George Orwell's dystopian novel ''1984.''

The alcohol industry has fiercely defended the law against such arguments. Chris Swonger, president and CEO of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, said it specifically requires the technology to be passive, similar to other current safety mandates such as seat belts and air bags.

''There is no switch, there's no government control, there is no sharing of data," he said. ''That's just an unfortunate scare tactic.''

But Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who authored the defunding effort, said even the dashboard acting on its own could serve as ''your judge, your jury, and your executioner." He cited the example of a mother who swerves in a snowstorm to avoid hitting a neighbor's pet, only for her car to deactivate itself because it determines she's impaired.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade association for U.S. automakers, made a similar case to regulators in 2024, arguing that much more research was needed before mandating the technology.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is establishing the rules to implement the Halt Act, told the AP in an email that it's still ''assessing developing technologies for potential deployment'' and expects to report back to Congress soon. Even supporters predict the agency will push the decision at least into 2027, and auto companies still would have another two to three years to install it.

Vouching for the tech's reliability

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research arm funded by auto insurers, recently announced that impairment detection and other technology aimed at curbing risky driving behavior would soon be included as criteria for a vehicle to earn one of its top safety awards.

Many states already have laws requiring breath-activated ignition interlock systems to be installed on the cars of DUI offenders. The system ultimately chosen under the Halt Act is intended to detect impairment beyond just drunk driving.

''We're still sort of pushing back against this narrative that the technology doesn't exist,'' said Stephanie Manning, chief government affairs officer at MADD. ''We've seen many different types of technology that can solve drunk driving. We just haven't seen it deployed and implemented the way that we would like.''