If you’re drunk, this car will know

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal sat in the driver’s seat of an electric Ford Mustang and breathed.

A monitor behind the steering wheel flashed green — indicating that his blood alcohol content (BAC) was below the state’s legal limit of .08 , and therefore he was all clear to drive.

If the car’s sensor had detected too high of a BAC, the monitor would have flashed red, and Blumenthal wouldn’t have been able to get the car to move.

Connecticut’s senior U.S. senator offered that demonstration Tuesday morning following a police department press conference touting the ability of anti-drunk driving technology to prevent impaired drivers from hitting the road, and potentially injuring themselves and so many others.

The fully electric Mustang he sat in to model that tech was a pilot vehicle owned by the state Department of Transportation (DOT). As state DOT Transportation Assistant Planning Director Joe Cristalli explained, the state has worked with Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS) to implement a Swedish-made sensor in this pilot vehicle that detects a driver’s BAC by having them sit and breathe while behind the wheel.

“When you’re in the vehicle, you do a small breath towards the sensor and it will give you a read of your BAC, or blood alcohol content,” Cristalli said. ​“If you’re .08 or above, it won’t start.” He said the department is providing data gathered from this pilot vehicle to DADSS, so that it can refine the technology before promoting wider adoption.

Blumenthal — who said he doesn’t drink — zeroed in on this tech by way of the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act from November 2021.

That law includes a requirement that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) come up with a new rule within three years regarding the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) and what tech car manufacturers need to include to prevent drunk driving.

The deadline for that new rule is this November. Blumenthal called for the release of such a rule as soon as possible.

“Very disturbingly, New Haven is one of the top 75 cities for drunk driving deaths,” Blumenthal said on Tuesday, referencing data collected by the NHTSA between 2018 and 2022. Hartford and Waterbury are also on that top 75 list. ​“It’s a distinction that no city welcomes, but it’s one New Haven is facing squarely.”

In all, he said, there were 57 drunk driving-related deaths in Connecticut between 2018 and 2022 — including 51 that took place in New Haven, Waterbury, and Hartford.

“We know that there’s technology that can prevent these deaths. They are all preventable.”

Thus his call for the continued testing and wider adoption of sensors like the one included in the DOT/DADSS pilot vehicle.

“It’s pretty simple,” he claimed. ​“When it is proven to be accurate and affordable, it should be implemented right away.”

Police Chief Karl Jacobson agreed, and described how his department has sought to combat drunk driving — by increasing the size of the local police’s motor vehicles unit, and by stopping ​“70 percent more vehicles” so far this year when compared to last year.

He said the city saw its eighth motor vehicle crash fatality Monday night — a two-car crash at Dixwell and Bassett. He’s not sure yet if this was a case of drunk driving, but, all too often, impaired drivers are involved in deadly crashes.

He said that New Haven, fortunately, has seen a downward trend of traffic deaths in recent years: with 21 in 2020, 19 in 2021, 16 in 2022, 11 in 2023, and 8 so far this year.

Jacobson concluded by noting that Tuesday is the two-year anniversary of the death of his son’s best friend, who died in a drunk driving crash on Middletown Avenue.

“This saves lives,” Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) New England Region Executive Director Bob Garguilo said about the technology Blumenthal and the DOT are supporting. ​“It’s not a rite of passage that we can all drink and drive.”

This story was first published Aug. 6, 2024 by the New Haven Independent.