The Senate’s 2,700-page bill contains requirements for new auto safety standards (pictured: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on August 4)
With health and safety provisions like monitors and technology to curb hot car child deaths, the ‘s 2,700-page infrastructure bill details extensive reforms beyond repairs to the country’s roads and bridges.
The $1.2 trillion piece of legislation states that ‘advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology must be standard equipment in all new passenger motor vehicles,’ and that vehicles should be able to ‘prevent or limit’ operation if a driver is impaired.
It calls for a window of five to six years for the new standard to go into effect.
About 28 people die in the US every day in drunk driving crashes, according to the NHTSA — one person every 52 minutes.
The bill doesn’t specify the mechanics of the new safety standard, and there are currently several different technologies being considered.
The Driver Detection System for Safety (DADSS) program is a public-private partnership partially funded by the US government and is one of the groups currently working on two separate alcohol detection systems that would require no action from the driver.
The first is a sensor testing the air within the car to detect a driver’s blood alcohol levels — but to work it would need to distinguish the driver’s breath from any inebriated passengers.
The second is an infrared touch sensor to detect blood alcohol level through skin that could be built into a steering wheel or start button.
Another provision focused on vehicles equipped with breathalizers
Drunk driving kills roughly one American every 52 minutes
A group called the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States voiced strong support for the infrastructure bill’s bid to reform the country’s impaired driving problem.
‘Driving impaired by one substance is dangerous, but combining substances leads to a multiplicative effect on driver impairment and can dramatically increase crash risk.This bill positions states to address impaired driving in all forms, which is vital to address this evolving and growing threat on our roads,’ President Chris Swonger said in a statement to Dailymail.com.
‘As Congress considers the way forward on any bipartisan legislation, we are encouraged that Congress will be able to get this important traffic safety legislation to the desk of President Biden for signature in order to save lives on our nation’s roads.’
Another auto safety provision in the Senate’s bill designates the Secretary of Transport to issue an auto safety standard rule requiring all new cars to be built with a system to alert the driver if a child or pet is left in the back seat.
The number of children dying from heatstroke rose to a record 53 per year in 2018 and 2019, according to NHTSA data.
More than 50 children died in hot car deaths in both 2018 and 2019