The year has been off to a busy start as the DADSS team exhibited at the Washington Auto Show. The show took place January 24th – February 4th at the Washington Convention Center, and featured our new Learning Experience Exhibit, which is the culmination of a year of hard work.

The exhibit helps bring the research and development process to life by featuring a timeline of older models of the technology, videos and prototypes of the current technology, which were used for live demonstrations. The exhibit also uses interactive touch displays to educate the public on alcohol’s effect on the body and the problem of drunk driving in America today. The DADSS team also showcased two research vehicles to further demonstrate how the technology is being integrated into a car’s cabin for testing.

The first few days of the show consisted of Washington Auto Show media and press days, including a “sneak peek” reception and cocktail hour on the evening of Thursday, the 25th, for lawmakers, partners (including several of you) and members of the press to test the prototypes. We were joined by representatives from our tech partners, Tru Touch and SenseAir.

Starting January 26, we got the opportunity to introduce the technology to the broader public. We met many people who were enthusiastic about the technology—from people with a personal connection to drunk driving, to families considering using the technology for their children, to fellow engineers and tech-driven folks who were curious about how the alcohol sensors work. A man in his 50s decided to Uber home when he realized his BAC was already at .07. One enthusiastic 10-year-old asked her mom if she could get the DADSS tech for her 16th birthday. Overall, the response to our booth was overwhelmingly positive.

DADSS at Washington Auto Show

LYNCHBURG, Va. (WSET) – New technology in cars could stop anyone who is over the legal limit, from getting behind the wheel and driving drunk.

It’s revolutionary technology that Lynchburg resident Bridget Moore wishes was available sooner.

“This is when my vehicle had spun around and the axle was completely knocked off,” Moore said as she described pictures of the crash.

Bridget Moore was hit by a drunk driver in Lynchburg about two years ago.

“I guess I was just blessed to be alive because he tore my truck up,” Moore said.

According to court documents that driver has now pleaded guilty to three DWIs in the last five years.

“Is it going to take for him to kill someone for something to be done?” Moore said.

Researchers in Sterling, Virginia say they have technology that would not just stop repeat offenders, but could possibly stop all drunk drivers. It’s a revolutionary technology and ABC 13 got an exclusive behind the scenes look.

“There are two systems that we are developing, one touch based and one breath based,” Robert Strassburger, President and CEO, Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety.

Robert Strassburger oversees the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety, also known as 

 We asked the question about how it tells the difference between the driver and someone who is in the backseat who may have had a few drinks.

“We certainly don’t want to discourage the use of a designated driver,” Strassburger said. “So we must assume there could be passengers in the car they may have been drinking and that is why we are looking at the CO2.

The CO2 levels confirm to the system that the air coming into the system is from a human. If the level is high, then the system will detect that is the driver.

“We also look at the proportion of CO2 with alcohol,” Strassburger said.

In other words, both levels would have to spike to confirm it’s the driver’s breath that the system is detecting and that the driver is over the legal limit. But this is just one system being tested. There’s also a touch system that uses infrared light

“They are shining the light into your finger, below the surface of your skin and then depending on how much light comes back we know if you have alcohol in your blood stream and how much if you do,” Strassburger said.

If you don’t pass the test of being under the legal limit, the car would start, but would not allow you to drive.

“The ultimate goal here with this technology, is one to commercialize it, to transfer it to auto makers so they can begin integrating it into vehicles just like any other safety option, like lane departure warning,” Strassburger said.

But before that can happen they are doing some testing and 

to start up a pilot program with human testers on the road.

“This is a public, private partnership through primarily the federal government and all vehicle manufacturers that do business in this country,” Strassburger said.

They hope to start the testing on human subjects in Virginia as early as June.

“We will have a paid driver who will drive a set route and there will be a paid passenger who will be drinking at certain intervals,” Strassburger said.

Eventually the technology would only be on the driver side. But just how expensive would all of this be?

“We don’t have a figure yet, but it will affordable,” Strassburger said.

Mothers against Drunk Driving in Virginia is one of the biggest promotors of this program.

“We hope for a day when no one is killed by drunk drivers, and this actually gives us the ability to get to that point,” Chris Konschak, spokesperson for Mothers Against Drunk Driving in Virginia said.

Now they want your feedback. DADSS will be traveling around the state with this technology trailer where you can actually test out some of the instruments yourself. Their next visit will be at the Martinsville Speedway in March. For more information, click 

Revolutionary technology could soon stop all drunk drivers

The Washington Auto Show showcased a lot of technology meant to keep you safer behind the wheel, including one program experimenting with tech to keep drunken drivers off the road.

WASHINGTON — This year’s D.C. auto show included a lot of emphasis on autonomous technology meant to keep you safer on the road.

But what if there was technology that could keep drunken drivers from ever getting on the road to begin with?

Boston-based KEA Technologies is working with the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS) program to come up with a passive way to keep drunken drivers off the road.

Bud Zaouk, the president and CEO of KEA Technologies, said the aim would be to allow the vehicle to start but not get into gear if too much alcohol was detected in the driver’s system.

“We don’t want to change what you do in the car,” Zaouk said. “You get in the car and then the sensors will identify whether you have alcohol and how much alcohol you have.”

Right now Zaouk and his team are testing two different systems.

One would be breath-based, with censors inside the car that would measure your breath when you exhale to calculate the alcohol concentration.

The other would be outfitted into push start buttons that more cars are coming equipped with, and use infrared technology to measure your blood alcohol content as you hit the button with your finger.

Out of the two technologies, Zauok said the breath-based technology is more developed, but it also comes with more hurdles.

For instance, what happens if you have the windows down? What if the driver is sober but passengers in the car have been drinking? Temperature and altitude fluctuations could also impact the technology.

If and when the technology is mastered, Zauok said he envisions it being one more option for car manufacturers to offer buyers, flatly denying he’s hoping for any government mandate.

“Where we feel the initial target would be [is] fleet application,” said Zaouk, referring to bus, limo and other commercial drivers who get behind the wheel for a living.

Parents of young drivers would also be a targeted market, with Zaouk calling it a “next layer of safety,” even for parents who believe their kids always make the right decision.

Testing of the technology will begin this year, with some of it being done in Virginia, “but we still have a long way to go,” Zaouk said.

WTOP: Program explores tech to keep drunken drivers off the road

Today, Robert Strassburger, President & CEO of ACTS, issued the following statement on behalf of the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS) Research Program in response to a new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine titled 

Getting to Zero Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities: A Comprehensive Approach to a Persistent Problem.

 This report, which was released today, identified promising strategies to reduce deaths caused by alcohol-impaired driving in the United States.

“Today’s report is both an encouraging endorsement of the potential life-saving impact of the DADSS technologies and an important reminder of the challenges we still face as a country in the fight to reduce alcohol-impaired driving fatalities. While we welcome the report’s recognition of the DADSS Program as an intervention that holds promise, we want to be clear that as a technology research initiative we do not have any opinions on the policy proposals which are unrelated to our research.

“That being said, we agree that possible policies like insurance discounts will help to incentivize consumer adoption of our technology and believe such policies—in combination with our efforts to drive demand—will preclude the need to mandate it. Per the authorization laid out by Congress, the Alcohol Detection System has always been structured to be a voluntary driver assist feature, like lane departure warning and automatic emergency braking. That same authorization also requires our research to be conducted at the 0.08 BAC level and will remain so unless we are directed by Congress.

“Our team is committed to working in partnership with all stakeholders including auto manufacturers, law enforcement, and public safety advocates and this report only further highlights the need to continue our research.”

Statement by Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS) Research Program on NASEM Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities Report

Over the course of the year, the DADSS Program has made some developments. In an effort to keep our supporters in the loop on all that we’re up to, we’ve put together a technical update on the latest in the development of the technology.

Progress on the research continues to further increase the accuracy, precision and speed of measurement for the breath-based and touch-based devices as well as to reduce the physical size of the devices so that they may be eventually integrated into mass–produced motor vehicles.

A directed–breath sensor derived from the DADSS technology by Sweden-based sensor company Senseair is being tested by public transit workers in Stockholm to obtain real–world operational data and experience that is aiding the development of the DADSS passive breath sensor. In select locations, transit employees use the directed–breath technology to verify they do not have alcohol in their system before operating subway cars.

In the lab, testing continues to understand how a driver’s and passenger’s breath move through a vehicle’s cabin in order to identify optimal locations for installing the DADSS passive breath sensor(s). The engineers are using the BREATHS

 simulator developed by the DADSS Program. The simulator blends gases including carbon dioxide, nitrogen and oxygen with moisture to create an “exhaled breath” that matches the composition, temperature and pressure of a natural human breath.

On the touch-based system, engineers are working to reduce the number of lasers necessary to provide an accurate blood alcohol content (BAC) measurement in an effort to achieve the lightning-quick speed required for the technology and to decrease the physical size of the device so that they may be eventually integrated into mass–produced motor vehicles. To test the current prototype, the DADSS Program has created a touch-based standard calibration device that combines a series of compounds to accurately simulate the composition and density of tissue in a finger.

Human subject testing continues at the Harvard Medical School-affiliated McLean Hospital. This testing gives researchers the necessary scientific data they need for a wide range of driver ethnicity, gender, age, etc. The data is used to refine the measurement algorithms to be employed to determine a driver’s BAC while also validating and verifying the performance of the latest breath- and touch-based devices. These tests include a range of “real-world” scenarios – such as “last call” and “social snacking” protocols.

The DADSS Program recently took delivery of the first 15 of 40 vehicles to be used in the first round of pilot field operational testing (PFOT) set to begin once federal government clearance has been obtained from the Office of Management and Budget. Work has begun to augment the pilot vehicles with the DADSS technologies and the needed instrumentation and data acquisition system. These tests will initially begin in Virginia and Massachusetts and will later expand to other select sites elsewhere in the U.S. The field testing will give researchers an opportunity to observe driver behaviors in real–world driving settings with a variety of natural factors such temperature, humidity and altitude. This will be an exciting step as researchers will gain valuable insights as the program moves out of the lab and onto the road.

 BREATHS means Biomimetic Respiratory Engineering Analysis and Testing with Humidity Simulator.

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DADSS at Washington Auto Show

Revolutionary technology could soon stop all drunk drivers

WTOP: Program explores tech to keep drunken drivers off the road

Statement by Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS) Research Program on NASEM Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities Report

DADSS Technical Update