The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed by Congress in 2021, included a statute requiring new cars to be equipped with driver monitoring systems designed to detect impaired drivers.
The law had set a deadline for implementation of the system by 2027, but it appears automakers will not be able to meet the requirement in time. In a February report sent to Congress, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said potential technologies were nowhere near ready for deployment.
“So far, there are no in-vehicle technologies in production that can passively measure BAC [blood alcohol content] or BrAC [breath alcohol content] above 0.08 g/dL,” NHTSA explained in the report. At the same time, the agency said other types of sensor-based monitoring systems “are not ready to be integrated into vehicles sold to the general public.”
One of the main obstacles currently facing large-scale implementation of the feature is the error rate of such systems, considering that even with a 99.9% accuracy rate, it would still result in millions of false positives per year, preventing sober drivers from operating their vehicles.
According to the NHTSA report, there is no available technology that comes close to achieving the required accuracy, but the agency hopes that impaired driving detection will one day “have a dramatic impact on road safety and in combating the scourge of impaired driving.”
Part of the project requires the NHTSA to determine exactly how to implement the law effectively. However, automakers will likely rely on in-car cameras and sensors that continuously monitor drivers. This has raised serious privacy concerns, which the agency is aware of.
Currently, some cars equipped with driver assistance features already include sensors capable of recognizing when the driver is intoxicated or drowsy. They are already under review by the NHTSA to assess their effectiveness in detecting impaired driving.
According to the website Motor1, these features may become mandatory in new cars starting in 2030. However, some automakers have already expressed opposition to the measure, including BMW, Ford, GM, and Toyota, saying that while they support the idea, they are concerned about customer privacy issues.
Photo: Mercedes-Benz. This content was created with the help of AI and reviewed by the editorial team.
