Congress Mandates Breath
Tests for ALL Drivers?!
Must Watch Video Explains All! (2023)
HR 3684, also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, includes provisions related to drunk driving prevention. These provisions require new safety features in cars, such as alcohol detection technology, which can detect if a driver is impaired and prevent them from starting the car.
Car manufacturers are taking steps to comply with these provisions by working on implementing alcohol detection technology in their vehicles. Some car companies, such as Volvo and Ford, have already announced plans to include this technology in their cars by 2024. Other manufacturers are also exploring similar technologies or partnerships with companies that specialize in alcohol detection technology.
However, the implementation of such technology raises concerns about personal privacy and data protection. Drivers have a reasonable expectation of privacy inside their vehicles, and the collection of sensitive personal data, such as video footage and location data, requires proper consent and notification.
There will be some form of technology collecting data while a driver is in the car's interior. The interior of the car is considered a place with a reasonable expectation of privacy even under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. New York v. Class, 475 U.S. 106, 114-115 (1986).
The language of the RIDE Act bill states the following: To require the Secretary of Transportation, acting through the Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, to prescribe a Federal motor vehicle safety standard for advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology, and for other purposes.
“For other purposes” is disturbing language because it attempts to provide a wide net of oversight. In other words, anyone who drives a car would be under the surveillance technology of the bill. But the bill states the following: Technical capability. –Any advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology required for new passenger motor vehicles under subsection (a) that measures blood alcohol concentration shall use the adult legal limit for blood alcohol concentration of the jurisdiction in which the passenger motor vehicle is located.
Does that mean breathalyzers for every new car? facial scanning technology? Something else? Likely some combination of both.
Who has access to the data collected by this system provided for in this legislation? Will the police be given access to the data without a warrant? What about insurance companies, will they be granted access to the data in order to better understand what kind of driver is being insured, or worse, will they know with what frequency your driving habits “change” which could then be interpreted as impairment?
When it comes to “driving prevention,” are we looking at the vehicle being locked in Park while running? Or will it not run at all? Soon enough the United States federal government could force automakers to install kill switches authorities can access and use to shut down any newer vehicle.
The kill switch, which is referred to as a safety device, must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.” What does that actually mean? It means government agencies will constantly be monitoring how you drive and measuring whether you are a threat to the public safety. But should you do something the system programming has deemed to recognize as driver impairment, your vehicle could find itself just shut off at a push of a button, which could be incredibly dangerous.
And returning back to legal interpretations, who defines and decides what the term "impaired driving" means? Currently it isn't defined by any legislation so does that leave that open regulators of the NHTSA or the DOT? Can you imagine the extent of algorithms written because you chose to pass someone or got to close to the line separating the lanes in a moment of brief distraction?
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