# Infrastructure package requires cars to have Alcohol Interlock Device by 2026.



## RodneyFarva (Jan 18, 2007)

The $1 trillion infrastructure package that Biden signed on Tuesday not only includes increased funding targeted toward improving auto safety, Congress also created a provision that mandates new cars have a monitoring system aimed to prevent intoxicated drivers from getting behind the wheel.

This technology could roll out in new vehicles as soon as 2026, according to The Associated Press, a timeline meant to give automakers time to adapt while the Transportation Department deicides what kind of technology is best to install in millions of vehicles.

“It’s monumental,” Alex Otte, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving said, according to AP. Otte added the package the “single most important legislation” that could be “the beginning of the end of drunk driving.”

“It will virtually eliminate the No. 1 killer on America’s roads,” she said.

Road traffic crashes are among the leading causes of death in the United States for people aged 1–54, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that every day, about 28 people in the United States die in drunk-driving crashes. Furthermore, between 2010 to 2019, more than 10,000 people died every year in drunk-driving crashes.

More recently, NHTSA estimated that 20,160 people died in motor vehicle crashes of any reason in the first half of 2021, which is a 18.4% increase over 2020 and the largest number of projected deaths in that time period since 2006. Speeding, impaired driving and not wearing seatbelts are theories for the spike.

While there are some convicted drunken drivers that must use breathalyzer devices to gain access to driving their car, new cars may use different technology, seeing the legislation only says the device must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired,” according to AP.

Locally, KEA Technologies in Marlborough is one of the companies working on this tech, creating the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety which are sensors that are made to go into the car. There are two types of sensors: one that uses the breath of the driver and one that when touched, can register blood alcohol levels in the skin.

In total, $17 billion of the new bill is targeted towards making the roads safer. With this funding, the U.S. could see more bike paths and green spaces as well, AP reported.

“These aren’t just numbers; these are family, friends, coworkers, neighbors and fellow Americans — and tragically and disproportionately, Black, brown and Native American,” Deputy Transportation Secretary Polly Trottenberg said, according to AP. “It’s not acceptable the level of deaths that we’re seeing on American highways right now.”


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## AB7 (Feb 12, 2019)

20,000 deaths a year they hope to prevent. Nothing to be said about “food” being sold which is filled with ingredients linked to health problems.


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## Roy Fehler (Jun 15, 2010)

Courts routinely reject the results of breath tests from devices made by medical equipment manufacturers, but now we’re supposed to trust Ford, GM, Honda, etc., to be accurate? 🙄


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## CCCSD (Jul 30, 2017)

So now a car company, that can’t figure out an airbag, is going to put a system in that won’t start my car because it says so… Fuuuuuuuuuuuccckkkkkk THAT!


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## Truck (Apr 3, 2006)

Vehicles should have a sensor that shut down at the detection of marijuana odor. Gridlock!


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## CCCSD (Jul 30, 2017)

Truck said:


> Vehicles should have a sensor that shut down at the detection of marijuana odor. Gridlock!


Yep. Why not?


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## k12kop (May 24, 2005)

Lovely, so somebody like me who does not drink by my own choice will get this shoved up my hole if I ever decide to buy a brand new car. Cant understand why I'm not excited.


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## USAF286 (May 20, 2011)

I wonder how much this will jack the price of cars up.


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## Foxy85 (Mar 29, 2006)

Anyone else thinking of the Utopia of San Angeles?

lmao…

Thanks to the machinations of the slippery Dr. Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne), the city is squeaky clean and crime-free, though there is still a police force to employ chipper, symbolically-named Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock). *This not-so-brave new world has outlawed everything “dangerous,” including engaging in kissing and non-VR sex, drinking booze, smoking, eating meat and salt, listening to music that isn’t an advertising jingle, and so on. Even the English language has been sanitized, with tickets automatically issued any time a curse word is uttered. And, in what are probably Demolition Man’s two most memorable takeaways, every restaurant has become a Taco Bell,* and toilet paper has been replaced by three seashells—though how or why the shells are used is left tantalizingly mysterious. (Less-remembered, but actually pretty funny: A facetious reference to “President Schwarzenegger,” a decade before the actor actually became the Governor of California.)


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## Foxy85 (Mar 29, 2006)

When Taco Bell starts taking over, I know the end is near.


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## RodneyFarva (Jan 18, 2007)

Foxy85 said:


> When Taco Bell starts taking over, I know the end is near.


*Ah, I see you're a man of culture as well.*


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