If you guys thought the Ford article was bad of reporting to Police. This here is already passed in legislation, was part of the Infrastructure bill in 2021. Every new car after 2026 will have an in car breathalyzer. I’m all for not driving drunk, but not mass punishment.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2138/all-info
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1331
https://www.motortrend.com/news/anti-drunk-driving-technology-mandated-infrastructure-bill/
https://time.com/6086981/bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-breathalyzers/
https://youtu.be/5k7E0silD20?si=oWSBom8hn488du-m
by brendan0127
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4 Comments
None of this says anything about “breathalyzers” as we think of them. It mandates ways to passively monitor drivers to see if they’re intoxicated.
Also these articles are before the bill was signed into law. So I dunno if this was even in the final bill.
The actual language is cars must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.”
So, no, you won’t be blowing in a tube to start your car.
Also this stuff never goes into effect when bills day they should. The mandates always get delayed.
Maybe someone who knows the current status of this can chime in.
> While there are no specifics, the mandated technology in future models 2026 and beyond needs to “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.”
Your title feels a bit over dramatic…
I used to install these in cars when I was younger and the companies were trying to pressure politicians to make them mandatory even 10 years ago, It always gets shot down though because in the end its going to be too much of a nightmare for everyday people, Half the people couldn’t even figure out how to use them after hours of training them and trying to help them learn how to do it. And the ones I installed were one of the more simple ones to get to work, you just had to blow and hum at the same time for I think it was 7 seconds. Some of them had all these patterns you had to do like blow, suck, hum, blow. Then there was the having to get the data read every month plus the fee, ours was 82 a month at the time but I’ve been out of that game for awhile now so who knows how much its changed and how expensive it is.
I’m going to say, I’m personally all for this. When I was a college idiot before Ubers were a thing me and pretty much everyone else drove drunk way more than we ever should have (which is zero times). We had one dude nicknamed DUI (pronounced dewey) because he did it so much.
We were just starting to take it super serious as it should be back then.
The only reason none of us are in prison now and for the rest of our lives is blind luck. All it takes is one mistake and your life and the lives of the victims of dumb shit and their families are destroyed.
And I guarantee anyone who regularly drinks and doesn’t Uber home 100% of the time has driven when they shouldn’t have and probably thinks they never “drove drunk.”
I see people every night driving drunk and/or high.
I have seen *doctors* drive into a liquor store to buy more booze for the night who were obviously impaired. I have seen so many rich professionals who have kids and respectable jobs leave bars and drive home when they shouldn’t.
This shit is pervasive and most drunk drivers are people who think they “never drive drunk” because they don’t realize they’re impaired. They’re the majority. The people who can barely stand up straight are much more rare because they get an Uber or someone stops them.
The people who get in the car thinking they’re fine (when they’re not) and then the last drink hits halfway home are numerous.
I’ve seen way too many impaired drivers do dumb shit and crash into parked cars.
And not just impaired by intoxicants.
My mom has Parkinson’s and used to drive me all the time when I was a kid when she shouldn’t have been and refused to stop. She would hit parked cars with me in the car (on my side of course).
This isn’t just about drugs and alcohol. We need the old and disabled (not ALL disabled of course, just the ones impaired) people who should not be driving off the road too.
This could stop parents from leaving their kids or dogs in the car to die when it’s hot as well.
I hate government overreach, but having been on every single side of this issue, I’m all for it.
I’m so over dealing with these drunken idiots and old people who endanger my lives every single day.
It will also drop insurance premiums and healthcare costs if we properly regulate insurance companies to not just use the savings to do stock buybacks and pay executives billions.
LFG