The $1 trillion infrastructure bill the Senate passed and sent to the House contains important provisions to address drunk and impaired voting.
Nineteen Republicans joined Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) and all 50 Democrats to pass the bill, 69-30.
It’s prospects are more complicated in the House, where Democrats say they won’t vote for the measure unless a $3.5 trillion antipoverty and climate measure also pass.
The bill includes several provisions to address drunk and impaired driving, Chris Swonger, president, Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S. noted in praising passed. Those provisions include:
- Advanced Impaired Driving Prevention Technology. This will be a multi-year federal rulemaking process to put technology on new vehicles that would prevent a drunk driver from driving impaired but would be unobtrusive to the safe, sober driver. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will be tasked with testing technologies, determining feasibility and proceeding to implementation.
- Expanded state efforts to address multiple substance impaired driving through innovative programs and technology to identify, monitor, and treat impaired drivers.
- Language to expand the number of states that qualify for incentive grant funding with the passage of effective ignition interlock laws
- A GAO study to improve national reporting of impaired driving arrest and citation data into federal databases.
- Expanded states efforts to collect timely and accurate data on crash information, including electronic crash reporting systems that allow accurate real or near-real-time access
- Public education efforts on cannabis-impaired driving prevention
- Data collection efforts for expanded drug testing among impaired drivers
- Research on cannabis-impaired driving
Swonger asserted “Impaired driving is 100% preventable and installing advanced prevention technology in new vehicles will bring our nation one step closer to ridding our highways of these dangerous drivers.
“Efforts to design vehicles that prevent impaired driving have been underway for more than a decade and this legislation will finally make it a reality resulting in more than 9,000 lives saved each year.
“Crash risks increase exponentially when drivers are impaired from multiple substances, and this issue is a growing problem for states. Preliminary NHTSA data show a rise in total traffic deaths during the pandemic, including impaired driving fatalities. Enacting the traffic safety measures included in this bill is the aggressive action needed to end impaired driving. We urge the House to join the Senate in passing this life-saving legislation.”
In addition to the drunk and impaired driving provisions, tastrhe measure includes $110 billion above previously project federal spending for roads and bridges, $66 billion for raise and $40 billion for transit, $65 billion to expand access to broadband, $65 billion for improving the electrical grid and energy production, $50 billion for making infrastructure more resiliant to floods and wildfires, $7.5 billion to fund replacement of school buses and ferries with lower-emission requirements.