The federal automobile safety agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, last week took a crucial first step in requiring manufacturers to implement new equipment to prevent drunk drivers from starting their cars. For the past two years, the agency has been investigating different routes to pursue and how the mandate would emerge. The government has now released its summary of the study and issued a request for public feedback.In 2021, Congress instructed the agency, as part of a bipartisan infrastructure package, to identify the best method to go ahead with this anti-drunk driving program. The legislation requires a new tech safety standard to be attained by November 2024, provided the technology is ready for implementation.The infrastructure legislation demands near-instant blood alcohol testing be done on drivers passively. The current anti-drunk driving technology employs a gadget the driver would have to blow into in order to start the vehicle, and this isn't going to be an acceptable condition for new car owners. NHTSA has been exploring a touch-based sensor as well as a passive breath analysis sensor, employing them as a redundant system. These sensors are referred to as "DADSS," or Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety. From the proposal:The DADSS touch sensor monitors the BAC in the capillary blood in the dermis layer of the skin on the palmar side of a driver’s hand. A touch pad with an optical module could be placed on an ignition switch or steering wheel. A near-infrared light flashes into the driver's skin when he touches the steering wheel or ignition switch. The touch pad gathers a portion of the near-infrared light that is reflected back. This light sends information about the skin’s chemical characteristics, including the quantity of alcohol present. The DADSS breath sensor employs detectors that concurrently monitor the quantities of alcohol and carbon dioxide (CO2) in a driver’s exhaled breath. The diluted breath is sucked into a measuring chamber, where optical detectors measure the quantity of infrared light absorbed by the alcohol and CO2. Using these measurements, the driver's BrAC is computed.More than 13,000 people were murdered in drunk driving collisions in 2021, a number that drastically surged during the 2020 coronavirus epidemic. Almost a third of traffic collision fatalities that year were caused by intoxicated drivers. According to federal agency studies, this type of passive anti-drunk driving equipment could save as many as 10,000 lives in the United States alone. If manufacturers use this technique worldwide, it might save countless more.So, there are still counterarguments to consider.“NHTSA’s information gathering and research efforts have found that several technologies show promise for detecting various states of impairment, which for the purposes of this notice are alcohol, drowsiness, and distraction,” the agency noted. “However, technological challenges, such as distinguishing between different impairment states, avoiding false positives, and determining appropriate prevention countermeasures, remain.”The acting chief of the NHTSA, Ann Carlson, noted that even a system with 99.9 percent accuracy may result in over a million false positives per day. If stone-sober individuals are banned from driving their new automobiles due to this equipment, it will face a furious response from the American public. There’s also historic precedence for this type of response, notably the 1970s legislation demanding manufacturers build a seatbelt ignition interlock. Consumers objected, and Congress soon took back the rule, despite the fact that it may have undoubtedly saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the decades between then and today.Americans, by and large, accept the notion of reducing drunk driving as much as possible. Thus far, the notion of this innovation being required has received mainly positive reactions. Whether it’ll still see such support once in use will be seen in due time. It’s definitely a sophisticated issue, and the American people as a group are skilled at engaging nuanced arguments, particularly as they apply to personal liberty and government control.