Technology Can Prevent Drunk Driving. Congress Should Let It.

Every day, families across America get the call no one should ever have to answer. A son isn’t coming home. A mother has been killed on her way back from work. A friend had dinner, got in the car and never arrived to the party. Thirty-two people are killed every day in alcohol-impaired driving crashes.

We have spent decades trying to change that. We strengthened laws. We changed social norms. We taught generations of Americans that drinking and driving can have devastating consequences.

It worked. Lives were saved.

Drunk driving never went away.

Nearly 12,000 people were killed in drunk-driving crashes in 2024 alone. Hundreds of thousands are injured each year. Behind every number is a person, a family and a life that ended for a reason that was entirely preventable.

Now, for the first time, we can do something previous generations could not:

We can build technology into cars that helps stop drunk driving before the car ever gets down the road.

Congress recognized that opportunity in 2021 when Republicans and Democrats came together to pass the HALT Drunk Driving Law.

The law directs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to establish a safety standard requiring new vehicles to come equipped with technology capable of preventing drunk driving.

There are different ways that technology could work. Some systems could measure alcohol. Some could detect other indicators of intoxication.

What matters is the outcome: stopping a drunk driver before impaired judgment becomes a tragedy.

This is not science fiction.

Automotive technology companies have already developed systems that can identify signs of alcohol impairment. Some are moving toward deployment in production vehicles.

We are closer than we have ever been to cars that can help protect us from one of the most persistent causes of preventable death on American roads.

At precisely this moment, some in Congress want to stop the work needed to make that progress possible.

Efforts to defund or block implementation of the HALT Drunk Driving Law would prevent NHTSA from completing the standards Congress itself directed the agency to develop.

That would be a profound mistake.

This debate has become entangled with claims that the law creates a government-controlled “kill switch” or allows third parties to track drivers.

It does not.

The HALT Drunk Driving Law does not authorize the government to remotely shut down your car. It does not create GPS tracking. It does not give law enforcement remote access to your vehicle. And it does not authorize the collection, sharing or sale of your personal driving data.

Privacy matters.

MADD believes strongly that Americans must be able to use their cars without being tracked by the government or having their personal information collected and sold.

Safety matters, too.

We do not have to choose between them.

If members of Congress have legitimate questions about privacy, technology or implementation, they should raise them. They should strengthen protections where necessary. That is precisely what the public rulemaking process is designed to do.

Stopping that process altogether does not protect privacy.

It delays technology that can save lives and prevent injuries.

And delay has consequences.

Every year we wait, thousands more families will bury someone they love because a person who was drunk was still able to drive their car.

For most of our history, preventing drunk driving depended almost entirely on human behavior.

Make the right choice.

Hand over your keys.

Call a friend.

Get a ride home.

Those messages still matter. Personal accountability still matters.

Now, technology gives us another line of defense.

We already accept that cars can warn us when we drift out of a lane, automatically brake before a collision and alert us when the driver appears dangerously tired.

We can use innovation to help prevent drunk driving, too.

For decades, families who lost loved ones to drunk driving have asked the same question: What could have stopped this?

We are getting closer to an answer.

We can unlock technology to save lives and prevent injuries.

Congress opened that door when it passed the bipartisan HALT Drunk Driving Law five years ago. Now it needs to let the work continue.

Stacey D. Stewart is the CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).