DETROIT – The Infrastructure Bill that passed Congress last fall contains a few stipulations in it that will affect the way you use your car. One is that rear-seat reminders will become standard to help prevent hot-car deaths, while the other, more significant change on the scale of fatalities per year is that automakers must figure by out 2026 a way for their vehicles to detect intoxicated drivers.
The text of the bill that defines this requirement does not reference any specific technology that must be used to detect an intoxicated driver. H.R.3684 spends right around 800 words defining the parameters of how something like this might work and speculating on the number of lives and money such a system might save with estimates from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
The passage defining what Congress actually wants describes a system that can “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired; and… prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected.
This is only half of the proposed system, though. The other half specifically references blood alcohol content, saying the technology must “passively and accurately detect whether the blood alcohol concentration of a driver of a motor vehicle is equal to or greater than the blood alcohol concentration described in section 163(a) of title 23, United States Code; and… prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if a blood alcohol concentration above the legal limit is detected.”
Basically, lawmakers want the auto industry to figure out a way to detect if a driver has a BAC above the legal limit, and restrict the operation of the vehicle if this is the case. The bill also notes that this system can be a “combination of systems described in subparagraphs (A) and (B),” which are the two previously quoted passages.
H.R.3684 defines a timeline for this rule being implemented, and it could easily take until 2026 for things to get rolling. Now that the bill has become law there will be a three-year period of discussion between regulators and automakers to work out the best solution to make the law’s text a reality. This can be extended for an additional three years, though. So, altogether, it could be another six years until any decision is made. After this period ends, there will be another two to three years of time given to automakers to install this technology in their cars.
Read more at The Drive
