ABBEVILLE — Congress passed a law in 2021 requiring all new passenger vehicles to be equipped with technology designed to detect and prevent impaired driving — but federal safety officials say the technology is not yet reliable enough to meet that standard.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act includes a section on "advanced impaired driving technology."
The law states: "To ensure the prevention of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities, advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology must be standard equipment in all new passenger motor vehicles."
The technology would passively monitor drivers to detect impairment. If impairment is detected, the vehicle could stop or the driver's ability to operate it could be limited.
John Fleuriet, owner of Fleuriet Automotive Services, said many vehicles already use passive monitoring systems while driving.
He said, "There's cameras that watch your eyes, and if you're not fixed on the road, it will start to beep and beep and beep and shake and tell you to keep your eyes on the road, to watch the road. If you continually don't look and it sees that you're not looking, it will stop your vehicle."
Fleuriet said the goal of the technology is to keep drivers focused.
"It makes sure that people are aware of their surroundings and what's in front of them, and that they're always keeping their eye on the road," he said.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it is working to minimize false positive detections. In a report to Congress in February, the agency wrote: "Currently, detection technology around the legal limit continues to have an error rate that would be unacceptably high. Accuracy is especially critical for this technology."
The NHTSA said experts have stated there is not currently any technology that can deliver an adequate level of reliability.
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