DAYTON — Imagine the night, after having a few drinks, when your car or truck won’t start because the installed passive blood alcohol monitoring system won’t allow it.
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That scenario seems a real possibility as this week, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that all new vehicles in the United States come equipped with alcohol detection systems. The goal is to stop an intoxicated person from driving.
Mothers Against Drunk Drivers loves the plan, but not everyone does.
“I don’t see this as anything but government overreach,” Dayton defense lawyer Patrick Mulligan told News Center 7′s Mike Campbell.
Everyone wants to stop drunk driving, Mulligan said, but he sees legal and economic issues and thinks potential drunk drivers will just have a sober friend start their car. There are also ethical questions, he said.
“If you trade safety for freedom, you end up with neither,” Mulligan said.
There’s a good chance the proposal would be challenged in federal courts or even local courts as a lot of people might see it as a violation of their civil rights, Campbell reports.
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The renewed focus on driver safety was spurred by a head-on collision crash last January caused by a drunk driver on a rural California road that killed both adult drivers and seven children.
The NTSB is pressuring the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to enact the recommendation because the NTSB has no regulatory power and can only ask other agencies to act.
When Congress passed the bipartisan infrastructure law, lawmakers required the NHTSA to make automakers install alcohol monitoring systems within three years. The agency can seek an extension. The legislation does not specify the technology, but it must “passively monitor” a driver to determine impairment.
Researchers have said cars would have a breath or a finger-touch system that would measure blood alcohol levels. If you were at .08, which is coming close to a national standard, your vehicle would not start.
The idea of an alcohol detection system in cars doesn’t make sense to Anu Ladenegan (le-duh-nay-gan), a Dayton driver.
“You can test me after I get a mile away if the cop stops me. . . but my own car? Nah, it shouldn’t be that way,” he said.
Ladenegan said he’s not comfortable with having his own car put the brakes on him if he needs a quick trip or fast escape from an emergency situation.
“Oregon District? Exactly. What about trying to get away from guns? What if my car can’t drive away?”
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