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Tech vs DWI

New Mexico senator cosponsors bipartisan bill in attempt to prevent drunk driving

For Sen. Ben Ray Luján, the New Mexico Democrat, the scourge of impaired driving that has for decades imperiled his home state is personal.

“I was hit head on by a drunk driver, less than half a mile away from my house,” the first-term senator tells SFR, recounting an experience from 29 years ago he’ll never forget. “It took me a long time to get over that. For the longest time when I close my eyes during the day or even at nighttime to go to bed, I see headlights coming at me. When I’d be driving, I’d slow down a little bit when cars would be coming on that two-lane road because it felt like they were going to come right into me.”

Now, he wants to legislate against what happened to him.

Luján is cosponsoring the Reduce Impaired Driving for Everyone (RIDE) Act with Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, which aims to use burgeoning technology in the hopes of keeping people from getting behind the wheel when they’ve had too much to drink.

The general idea: Install what amounts to a nanny-cam system and other high-tech gadgetry in all new vehicles built after 2023.

But the details are sketchy.

The bill does not spell out what kinds of technologies would be used or how car companies could use the data that comes from the upgrades.

Luján’s vision is based on technology that already exists.

“Newer vehicles right now have the auto feature to keep you in your lane when you’re going over a certain speed, or when you have your cruise control set,” he says. “This would be like that, this would be part of the car, the technology would be in there.”

Some of the technologies for impaired driving are being developed, while existing tech has already been produced.

In some instances the technology was unreliable due to the lack of a uniform certification that would enable law enforcement to use it in court, a lack of training for police officers and poor messaging from manufacturers and public officials looking to use it, which left the public guessing.

Breath-test machines have been the standard for measuring blood alcohol concentration. But they aren’t without flaws. In 2019 a New York Times investigation found the machines too often give skewed results when measuring blood alcohol concentration. The investigation also found judges in Massachusetts and New Jersey had thrown out more than 30,000 breath tests.

There’s an open question as to what will be different about the new technologies Lujan and Scott are banking on in their bill, which they introduced April 22. A hearing for the RIDE Act has yet to be scheduled.

Volvo in 2019 released a statement addressing the issues behind impaired and distracted driving by suggesting that in-car cameras and other sensors that monitor the driver be allowed to intervene if an intoxicated driver is operating the vehicle. If a driver does not respond to warning signs after showing signs of impairment such as swerving, nodding off and other actions that risk an accident, the car could take matters into its own hands by limiting the car’s speed, alerting on-call assistance and even slowing down and parking the vehicle.

Toyota and Nissan have announced plans to use technology inside its vehicles that deter impaired drivers. Both companies have talked about using different types of sensors that are designed to detect a driver’s blood alcohol concentration in the steering wheel or shift knob. One of the technologies uses an infrared light to shine on the driver’s skin and send back data to detect whether a driver is impaired by reading ethanol levels . Another feature relies on detecting BAC levels in the driver’s sweat from the steering wheel.

The problem of drunk driving the senators aim to blunt is both real and well documented, and it has devastated New Mexico for decades. In 2019 New Mexico ranked fifth in impaired driving deaths in the country, according to Safewise. Nationally, an average of 28 Americans die every day due to impaired driving.

The RIDE Act would require the secretary of transportation to require manufacturers to install the burgeoning, though unspecified technology into all vehicles within two years after the law goes into effect. The bill does not address existing vehicles on the road.

“It’ll mean more lives saved…plain and simple,” Luján says. “To make sure that we don’t lose more people, and that more people are not killed. Think about that 41-year-old mom in Albuquerque.”

He was referring to Janell Katesigwa, a mother of four, who was killed after a collision with an alleged drunken driver on her way to work the morning of May 23.

“She might still be with us today,” the senator says. “That’s what this means.”

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