You may have heard rumors that, starting next year, a new law will require cars to be equipped with a “kill switch” so authorities can remotely disable your vehicle. You may have also seen the many hysterical news hits this has generated, featuring politicians breathlessly claiming that Big Brother is coming for your keys. That’s not really what’s happening, but there are still reasons for concern as the provisions of this law come into effect. This all began with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed in 2021. That $1.2 trillion law was intended to fund the post-COVID economic recovery, but as is so often the case with federal legislation these days, it included lots of smaller bills dealing with other things. Section 24220, also known as the “Halt Drunk Driving Act,” directed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to create a standard requiring all new cars to have “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology.” In the legislation, this technology was defined as either a passive monitoring system that tracks a driver’s behavior to identify impairment, or a system that does the same by monitoring a driver’s blood alcohol concentration to determine if they’re over the legal limit. Either way, the technology must intervene to “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected.” Ignition-interlock devices that require drivers to pass a breathalyzer test before starting a car already exist, but this would transform that from an active system put in place in specific circumstances under court order, to a passive system in every new car that’s constantly monitoring drivers (likely using the many sensors and cameras already built into many new cars) and can intervene at any time. Drunk driving is definitely bad, and the phrase “kill switch” is nowhere to be found in Section 24220, nor does it give the police or anyone else authority to remotely shut down a car for any reason. But for the first time, it would create a framework where the decision of whether a person should be operating a vehicle is taken out of the hands of a driver and put into the hands of automakers. And once that technology is in place, all that’s preventing actual government intervention is a small tweak to the law. The original law directed the NHTSA to finalize its rules in 2024, but the federal safety agency missed that deadline, and so now the rules are due to be finalized by November 2027. That’s why rumors of an impending dystopian crisis have been flying. But things are a lot more complicated than that, so tune into The Drive’s YouTube video to get the full story.
+24 others
