Safety Group To Mandate Speed Warnings And DUI Interlock For Top Awards
The Insurance Institute for HIghway Safety (IIHS) is raising the bar on carmakers to keep people from speeding and driving after spending too much time at the bar.
The organization has announced plans to mandate several new safety technologies, beyond what the government requires, in order to receive its highest Top Safety Pick+ awards.
First up is intelligent speed assistance (ISA) which is currently available in several models. It can warn drivers when they are exceeding a set speed and even slow the car down to keep it at the limit.
IIHS will issue the first unofficial scores for the tech in 2027 and add it to the Top Safety Pick+ criteria after that. It hasn’t yet determined if the feature will need to be standard or optional for the award.
“We want to see systems that can help drivers maintain safe speeds without being overly annoying, which could lead drivers to turn them off,” an IIHS spokesman told American Cars And Racing.
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Next up is driver impairment tech, with a focus on keeping people under the influence of drugs and alcohol from behind the wheel.
Beyond built-in breathalyzers, which are mandated in several states for convicted offenders to get their licenses back, IIHS is looking at systems that can monitor the air in the cabin for alcohol and other substances, one-touch skin analyzers and eye trackers that aren’t chemically dependent.
Many cars are already equipped with various attention monitors aimed at making sure drivers aren’t drowsy or are keeping their eyes on the road. An exact timeline for the inattentive driver tech testing has not been confirmed.
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“As part of our 30×30 vision to cut U.S. road deaths 30% by 2030, we are committed to addressing the risky — and often illegal — behavior that underlies most fatalities today,” IIHS president David Harkey said in a news release. “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.”
IIHS’s crash testing and accident avoidance system evaluations are much more comprehensive than those of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). It points to a recent change that required a more persistent unbuckled seatbelt alert than is required by federal regulations, which led to an increase in compliance by automakers from 16% to nearly 75%.