Rep. Scott Perry sponsors bill to repeal regulations for preventing 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; 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 Pennsylvania 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.”

Pam Ondash, whose son Dave Cook was killed in 2011 when his vehicle was hit by a drunk driver, is now a volunteer with MADD, working to prevent future impaired-driving deaths in Pennsylvania and nationwide.

Ondash told the Pennsylvania Independent in a phone interview that the HALT Act, if implemented, would save many lives and would not violate anyone’s rights: “If 10,000 people get in the car and they cannot start the car because the car has detected that they’re impaired, we’ve already saved 10,000 lives. So I’m all for this, and I know that there’s a lot of pushback against this, but at the same time, we are not interfering with anyone’s right to drive. It’s a privilege. It is not a right; it’s a privilege to drive. And when you get behind the wheel of a car, which is a weapon, and you take someone’s life, the thing that you don’t think about is how that’s affecting that person.” 

“Dave was 34 at the time of his death,” she said of her son. “His children were five, nine, and 11, so they have grown up most of their lives without their dad.” 

Ondash noted that the technology would help save the lives not just of those who would be killed by drunk drivers: “We’re working for the driver too. What’s his family going to do if he ends up dead because he chose to drive impaired? They’ll be in the same position that we are in, and it’s a very, very painful, long journey to deal with something that is 100% preventable.”

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 Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, 5,111 people were injured and 308 killed in alcohol-related automobile crashes in the commonwealth in 2023.

A January 2024 proposed rule by the NHTSA estimated that about 12,600 traffic fatalities were caused by alcohol impairment in 2021 alone. 

The agency refuted the argument that advanced impairment driving technology regulations would be unconstitutional: “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.

Pennsylvania Republican Reps. Mike Kelly, Dan Meuser, Perry, Guy Reschenthaler, and Lloyd Smucker voted in favor of the amendment. None responded to a request from the Pennsylvania Independent for comments for this story. 

Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, John Joyce, and Glenn Thompson joined all of Pennsylvania’s Democratic representatives in voting no. 

Ondash hopes Perry’s bill does not become law. “My first thought is anger. They have not gone through what we’ve gone through. They haven’t experienced, and hopefully they never have to experience the loss of a loved one, particularly a child, due to a decision. … All we want to do is keep the roads safe and save lives.”