Rep. Laura Gillen pushes $45 million tech contest to make cars stop drunk drivers
WASHINGTON — Long Island Rep.Laura Gillen is driving a bipartisan push to stop drunks from driving and strengthen a national tracking system of drug-involved car crashes.The Drunk Driving Prevention and Enforcement Act, co-sponsored by Reps.
Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), is intended to help make a 2021 law requiring anti-drunk driving tech in cars a reality.“Each day, 34 American families lose a loved one to a drunk driving crash,” Gillen said in a statement to The Post.“Drunk driving remains the leading cause of death on our highways, and far too many Long Island families know the pain of a life cut short.”An estimated 12,429 people were killed in the US in 2023 from drunk driving, about 34 a day, according to the latest data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).Alcohol-involved crashes caused $68.9 billion worth of economic damage in 2019 and 497,000 injuries, per NHTSA.
They were also responsible for about a third of all fatal vehicular accidents.Back in 2021, Congress passed the HALT Drunk Driving Act in a larger bipartisan infrastructure package, requiring NHTSA to force new passenger vehicles be equipped with passive anti-drunk driving technology.However, almost five years later, that policy hasn’t been implemented, which is why Gillen’s (D-NY) new bill takes another approach by establishing a cash prize of at least $45 million to develop a consumer-ready version of the safety feature.The Transportation Department would oversee the rules and determine the winner.“I think it’s past due for this bill,” Erica Linn, an ambassador at Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), told The Post.
“We lose too many people,” she added.“Every 42 seconds in this country, somebody is involved in a crash and fatality.
This must stop.We have the technology to make the stop, and it has nothing to do with affordability or privacy issues.”Linn lost both her parents during her birthday in 2016 to a drunk driv...