WASHINGTON (Dec. 11, 2023) – December is National Impaired Driving Prevention Month, and the NTSB is calling on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to act on its recommendations to require impaired driving detection technology in vehicles.
About a third of all traffic fatalities in the U.S. are due to alcohol-impaired driving crashes—more than 13,000 deaths annually. Over the past five decades, the NTSB has issued more than 150 safety recommendations related to crash investigations involving impairment.
After a horrific New Years Day crash in 2021 that killed nine people including seven children, the NTSB called on NHTSA to require all new vehicles be equipped with passive alcohol impairment detection systems, advanced driver monitoring systems or a combination of both that would prevent or limit the vehicle’s operation if alcohol impairment was detected. That recommendation remains open and classified as an “unacceptable response.”
“This is a public health crisis that has devastated our country for too long,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. “Adding to our devastation is the knowledge that there are technology solutions available TODAY that can prevent crashes like the New Year’s Day tragedy, and countless others since, from happening again…if we’re bold enough to act. And yet, we’re still waiting.”
The NTSB first asked NHTSA to advance in-vehicle technology that would prevent impaired driving in its 2013 report Reaching Zero: Actions to Eliminate Alcohol-Impaired Driving. That report called on NHTSA to accelerate the development of new in-vehicle alcohol detection technologies and addressed the role of enforcement and adjudication in achieving meaningful reductions in impaired driving.
“Countermeasures like education and high-visibility enforcement are an important part of the solution to traffic violence, but they alone cannot get us to zero, which is the only acceptable number of lives lost,” said Chair Homendy. “The best way to eliminate deaths and injuries for all road users is through the safe system approach, which builds in layers of redundancy to protect people.”
“Enough is enough. It’s time for NHTSA to save thousands of lives by requiring impaired driving detection technology in all new vehicles.”
More information about eliminating impaired driving is available on NTSB’s website.
To report an incident/accident or if you are a public safety agency, please call 1-844-373-9922 or 202-314-6290 to speak to a Watch Officer at the NTSB Response Operations Center (ROC) in Washington, DC (24/7).
