IIHS Adds Speeding, Drunk-Driving Detection to Award Criteria
New cars will have to do a better job of detecting speeding and drunk driving to earn a Top Safety Pick+, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety announced Tuesday. Changes to the agency’s highest rating were announced during a roundtable on impaired driving organized by Mothers Against Drunk Driving and are intended to curb dangerous and illegal activity, the agency said.
Related: Safety Advocates Gin Up Support for Alcohol Detection Tech to Combat Drunken Driving
What Are the Changes in Detail?
The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act included bipartisan legislation proposing new cars built after 2026 come with passive systems to test a driver’s blood alcohol content and prevent or limit the operation of the vehicle if the BAC exceeds the legal limit of 0.08%. For now, that technology is not proven or standardized. The rule has been delayed from the November 2024 deadline as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration works to “identify detection technologies that can reliably and accurately ‘ensure the prevention of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities.’”
Details on the testing parameters are vague, but IIHS claims 10,000 lives a year could be saved if detectors for BAC were in all vehicles.
A second component to earn a Top Safety Pick+ in 2027 is a speed-limit detector. Such systems, called intelligent speed assistance by the IIHS, exist in many new cars now. ISA consists of alerts warning a driver that they are exceeding the speed limit. In some cases, those alerts intensify and can actively slow down a car when adaptive cruise control is engaged. The driver can disable the function.
The new testing protocol wouldn’t go into effect until 2027, in line with government mandates. IIHS expects automakers will incorporate monitoring and detection technology to adhere to the coveted safety awards, as automakers have done for other criteria.
“We are committed to addressing the risky — and often illegal — behavior that underlies most fatalities today,” IIHS President David Harkey said. “One way we plan to do that is to leverage our ratings and award programs to encourage automakers to adopt this new class of safety technology, just as we got them to improve vehicle structures, airbags and collision avoidance systems.”
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