Rep. Tom Tiffany cosponsors bill to repeal regulations to prevent drunk driving

A provision in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act directed the secretary of transportation to issue a rule to require that all newly manufactured cars include technology to automatically prevent vehicles from operating when the driver is intoxicated.

Because the technology was not yet ready, the rules did not immediately go into effect. Before the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has had a chance to finalize them for 2026 or 2027, congressional Republicans are attempting to repeal the provision.

On Feb. 7, Pennsylvania U.S. Rep. Scott Perry filed the No Kill Switches in Cars Act, a bill to repeal the law’s requirement that the secretary of transportation issue the regulations. “Kill Switches can be used to restrict your travel or to track you without a warrant,” Perry said in a press release. “The No Kill Switches in Cars Act removes this threat to our constitutional rights and ensures our ability to travel freely.”

Perry’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Wisconsin Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany is one of 14 original cosponsors of the repeal bill. Tiffany’s office did not respond to a request for comment; however, he and dozens of GOP colleagues signed a November 2023 letter to then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg that said: “The American People need answers about this technology. We have grave concerns about its use against our constituents, safety implications, and potential for abuse of Americans and their constitutional rights.”

The 2021 provisions, known as the HALT Drunk Driving Act, were strongly backed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a nonprofit organization that works to end drugged and drunk driving. The group noted in a 2023 fact sheet: “Advanced impaired driving prevention systems use sensors integrated into a car that passively determine if the person behind the wheel is illegally impaired. … The vehicle technology standard must protect driver privacy and should not make consumers vulnerable to privacy invasions or allow the collection, storage or use of their data for commercial or malicious purposes.” 

The law does not specify the type of technology to be used, but one of the most viable options would be a system that automatically checks drivers’ blood alcohol level before it will move into drive mode, according to Becky Iannotta, the senior director of strategic policy and engagement of MADD. 

“This is a BAC [blood alcohol content] measurement that we know from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety will save 10,000 lives a year, and the technology to do that is very mature. They are talking about the breath sensor being available by 2025,” Iannotta told the Wisconsin Independent. “Obviously MADD would not support the use of this data for anything other than stopping an impaired driver, a drunk driver from hurting or killing someone or themselves.”

Sheila Lockwood, whose 23-year-old son Austin was killed in a crash as a passenger in a car driven by a drunk driver near Rhinelander, Wisconsin, in 2018, is a national ambassador with MADD, working to prevent future impaired driving deaths in Wisconsin and nationwide. 

Lockwood told the Wisconsin Independent in a phone interview that the HALT Act would not violate anyone’s rights and, if implemented, would have a huge positive impact: “That technology is to prevent the crash from happening in the first place. So much of our work, up till that time, had been done to try to make penalties stiffer, try to deter people, and clearly that didn’t work, because the numbers have been going in the wrong direction. The numbers of impaired drivers has been going up, not down. So instead of now looking at trying to punish someone after the fact, after they’ve taken somebody’s life, after they’ve destroyed lives, we are preventing the crash from happening the first time.”

“The studies have shown that over 10,000 lives each year could be saved with this technology,” Lockwood said. “It’s very, very frustrating, because we have to keep fighting this and we keep losing loved ones.”

Ipsos polls for MADD conducted in 2021 and 2022 found about 90% support among American adults for integrating technology into vehicles to prevent drunk driving. 

According to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, 3,577 people were injured and 199 killed in driving crashes involving alcohol- or drug-impaired drivers in the state in 2023. 

A January 2024 notice of proposed rulemaking by the NHTSA estimated that about 12,600 traffic fatalities were caused by drivers impaired by alcohol in 2021 alone. 

Lockwood recalled that one lawmaker had said to her that driving drunk was a personal choice: “Unfortunately, when I was speaking to one senator prior to the bill being signed, he had said it’s his right, just like a seat belt, and we shouldn’t stop things. And we stopped him right there. First of all, if you don’t want to wear your seat belt, you are putting your own life at risk,” she said. “If you want to get into a vehicle impaired, you are putting every single person on the road, or on the sidewalk, or in a yard, or in their home at risk.”

The NHTSA notice also refuted the argument that the regulations would be an unconstitutional violation of individual rights: “NHTSA is aware that a combination of misinformation related to advanced drunk and impaired driving technologies, and misbelief that there exists a right to drive while drunk have resulted in some individuals believing that this rulemaking is pursuing a course of action that might unduly infringe upon their rights. … As NHTSA has said before, driving is a privilege, not a right.”

In November 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected by a vote of 201-229 a proposed amendment that would have barred funding for the implementation of the regulations.

Wisconsin Republican Reps. Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman, Bryan Steill, Tiffany, and Derrick Van Orden voted in favor of the amendment. None immediately responded to a request for comment. 

Democratic Reps. Gwen Moore and Mark Pocan voted no.

Lockwood said fully implementing a law that would save 10,000 lives annually should not be controversial: “How can we not look at that and say this is a good law? This is something that we need to do, and we should have done 11,087 days ago, when it was signed in the bill. We should have done it before that.”