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.”