New Act Puts $45 Million Prize on the Line to Speed Up Passive Anti-Drunk Driving Tech in Cars

The new Drunk Driving Prevention and Enforcement Act of 2025 is tackling the serious issue of impaired driving head-on, focusing on three major areas: technology, law enforcement support, and better data collection. This bill aims to reduce the over 12,000 annual traffic deaths caused by alcohol-impaired driving by focusing on prevention and smarter enforcement. Think of it as a multi-pronged approach to making our roads safer, funded primarily through the Highway Trust Fund.

The $45 Million Race for Safer Cars

One of the biggest moves in this bill is a massive competitive prize program run by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The Secretary of Transportation is authorized to award a cash prize of at least $45,000,000 to the winner who can develop or install consumer-ready, passive anti-drunk driving technology. This tech must use sensors—like breath-based or touch-based systems—to prevent someone with a blood alcohol concentration over the legal limit from operating the vehicle. The goal here is to accelerate the deployment of this technology, which was already mandated in the 2021 infrastructure law, by throwing serious money at the problem. For the tech industry, this is a huge incentive to solve a tough engineering challenge, potentially getting this life-saving feature into your next car much faster.

Backing Up the Blue: A New Enforcement Center

Section 4 establishes a Traffic Safety Enforcement Center of Excellence within the Department of Transportation within one year. This center isn’t about setting national speed limits; it’s about providing state and local law enforcement with centralized expertise and tools. The center will promote evidence-based strategies—like data-driven deployment of drunk-driving patrols and speed enforcement—to help agencies use their limited resources more efficiently. For local police departments, this means getting access to best practices and standardized training to target high-crash areas, ensuring that traffic enforcement is smart, data-driven, and focused on reducing fatalities. This section authorizes $5,000,000 annually from the Highway Trust Fund to keep the center running.

Tracking the Other Impairments: The Drug Data System

While drunk driving gets the most attention, drug-impaired driving is a growing concern. Section 5 mandates the creation of a National Drug Involved Crash Data Collection System. The Administrator of NHTSA must establish this system to collect standardized toxicology data from states involved in serious injury and fatal crashes where drivers test positive for impairing substances other than alcohol. This is a big deal because right now, national data on drug-involved crashes is inconsistent. To make this happen, the bill authorizes $30,000,000 annually from fiscal year 2026 through 2031, including grants to help states—especially those with high-fatality or rural areas—build the necessary capacity for toxicology labs and data linkage. However, states might be required to match some of these funds unless they can prove financial hardship, which could be a hurdle for smaller state budgets. Importantly, any data released to the public must be de-identified and comply with HIPAA, ensuring privacy protections are built into the system from the start.