In a few years, all new vehicles sold in the United States will be required to have the capability to passively detect when drivers are under the influence of alcohol. If they are intoxicated, the system will immobilize the car. The rule is embedded in the infrastructure law signed by President Biden in 2021, but the measure will need to be reviewed, and a final regulation is expected to be released next year.
However, there is a problem for the law to be implemented: the technology to detect if the driver is under the influence of alcohol does not yet exist. The automotive industry is trying to rapidly create this technology. So far, only one company is close to achieving this, Asahi Kasei, a Japanese chemical and electronics company.
Asahi Kasei is working with automakers and government agencies to bring the technology to commercial viability as quickly as possible. Mike Franchy, the company’s director, stated that the new American law may require car manufacturers to incorporate the alcohol detection feature on the road as early as 2026.
“To be honest, I think it caught everyone by surprise. It’s something that has been proposed in the past. But everyone assumed we would see this happen first in Europe,” Franchy said in an interview with Automotive News. “But it really happened here in the United States.”
How will the technology work?
Drivers would exhale towards a small sensor that could be embedded in the steering column or the side door trim and wait for a quick pass/fail reading of their breath alcohol content.
The system uses an algorithm that detects the amount of ethanol in the driver’s breath compared to the natural carbon dioxide. The sensor works through a detector that measures how much infrared light of a specific wavelength is absorbed by the surrounding air. This measurement is then used to calculate the concentration of a specific gas – in this case, ethyl alcohol.
Of course, there are many questions to be answered: what happens when the sensor gets dirty, for example? What prevents the supposed intoxicated driver from using a can of gasoline or a battery-powered fan to blow air from the cabin instead of their own?
In short, questions that technology companies have little time to resolve if the law really comes into effect.
Source: Automotive News