C2 The BulleTin • Sunday, June 20, 2021
Legislature
This session saw a specific
spotlight on the acute needs
across Oregon to support peo-
ple experiencing homelessness.
The city of Bend received
$2.5 million for a navigation
center that provides services,
in addition to $2 million from
Rep. Jason Kropf’s American
Rescue Plan Act allocation
for a year-round, low-barrier
shelter.
Central Oregon’s legislators
also had a hand in bills that
would create more housing.
This, combined with a 2019
bill that creates more density
via middle housing units such
as duplexes, triplexes and cot-
Continued from C1
Also helpful was a delayed
implementation of the Paid
Family and Medical Leave In-
surance program that provides
employers and the state more
time to implement this new
law, extending the deadline out
a year to January 2023.
And at this time legislation
looks to be passing to bolster
economic development by al-
lowing local jurisdictions to
temporarily suspend enter-
prise zone employment due
to pandemic- related delays on
construction.
tage homes, is welcome legis-
lation for our housing-starved
community.
The lack of child care was
highlighted in this year’s ses-
sion.
Several bills took aim at
helping ease the child care
shortage across the state as
families are trying to return to
work and employers are trying
to find enough labor to keep
their doors open. One such ef-
fort was Rep. Jack Zika’s bill to
ease regulations on where child
care can be located and on reg-
ulatory barriers associated with
operating a center.
Lawmakers also considered
a bill to create a new stand-
alone Department of Early
Learning to better coordinate
the state’s early childhood ed-
ucation programs and stream-
line supporting services to
child care providers and fam-
ilies.
The lack of child care is so
astute that Sen. Tim Knopp in-
cluded $1 million in his ARPA
allocation to a pilot program at
Oregon State University-Cas-
cades and Central Oregon
Community College that will
fund a new child care program
developed cooperatively by the
two higher institutions and of-
fered to students, faculty and
the public. The program awaits
final funding from Deschutes
County.
And, late this session, the
business community proposed
promising ideas to improve the
severe labor shortage that is
hindering businesses in Cen-
tral Oregon and across the
state. The proposal would cre-
ate an essential-worker stim-
ulus payment to those who
worked through COVID-19
and include a return-to-work
hiring bonus to help lure peo-
ple on unemployment pay-
ments back to work.
All told, the 2021 session
can be chalked up as an un-
expected success as progress
has been made on key issues
impacting our community
and businesses get a break
from new taxes for the time
being. Our local lawmakers,
Knopp,
Kropf and Zika all played a
significant role in helping to
advocate for the needs of our
community. We thank them
for their steadfast support and
leadership in what truly was a
unique legislative session.
e
Katy Brooks is the Bend Chamber of
Commerce CEO. Her vision for the
chamber is to catalyze an environment
where businesses, their employees and
the community thrive.
Could all vehicles have breathalyzers someday?
BY FREDRIXK KUNKLE • The Washington Post
Technology that could reduce drunken driving has
evolved faster than the willingness among political and
auto industry leaders to put it to use, safety advocates say.
But that could be changing.
On Wednesday, the Automotive Coalition for Traffic
Safety announced that its breath-analyzing interlock,
which can detect impaired drivers, will be available for
use in commercial vehicles for the first time later this
year. A consumer version could be ready by 2024.
The device is among sev-
eral anti-DUI technologies
that could be used to prevent
drunken driving and has so
far attracted the most atten-
tion. For more than a decade,
the federal government and
the auto industry have been
working to develop the device
as part of a Driver Alcohol De-
tection System for Safety, or
DADSS, that can passively de-
tect whether a driver is intox-
icated and prevent the vehicle
from starting.
But with a new administra-
tion in the White House, a new
Congress and advances in the
technology, momentum ap-
pears to be building for new
federal auto safety standards
that would go beyond DADSS
to reduce alcohol-related
crashes and save an estimated
9,400 lives.
Mothers Against Drunk
Driving is pressing the auto
industry to take advantage of
existing technology, such as
driver-monitoring and driver-
assist lane controls, to reduce
drunken driving now, rather
than wait for DADSS or fully
autonomous vehicles to hit the
market.
While some automakers,
such as Volvo, have integrated
driver-monitoring cameras
and sensors into their safety
systems, advocates expressed
frustration that the rest of the
industry has been slow to do
the same.
“We are mad that the auto-
makers are ignoring the po-
tential technologies they have
to prevent drunken driving,”
said Ken Snyder, whose daugh-
ter, Katie Snyder Evans, was
killed by a drunk driver in Oc-
tober 2017 in California. He
said there are 241 technologies
available to combat drunken
driving, with some requiring
little more than rejiggering
the computer code in driver-
assist technology. “I can’t sit
still until this is done because
I don’t want other families to
go through the hell we’ve been
through,” Snyder said.
The number of drunken
driving fatalities has fallen by
more than half since 1982,
when the federal government
began collecting alcohol-
related crash data. Yet every
50 minutes, another Ameri-
can dies in an alcohol-related
crash. The Insurance Infor-
mation Institute says 10,142
people were killed in alcohol-
related crashes in 2019, ac-
counting for 28% of all traffic
fatalities.
Bipartisan legislation — the
Reduce Impaired Driving for
Everyone Act in the Senate
and a similar bill in the House
— would require the National
Highway Traffic Safety Admin-
istration to formulate rules and
standards on implementing
anti-DUI technology. Backers
include Rep. Debbie Dingell
and Sen. Gary Peters, both
Democrats from Michigan.
Several Republicans, including
Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and
Rep. David McKinley of West
Virginia, have also signed on.
The auto industry opposes
such mandates. Industry offi-
cials warn that existing driv-
er-assist and driver-monitor-
ing technology is not yet up to
the task of intervening against
a drunk driver, and that inef-
fective or unreliable measures
could backfire. What would
happen, they ask, if technology
designed to monitor driver be-
havior inaccurately determined
that a driver was impaired and
disabled the vehicle or forced
the vehicle off the road?
“While these systems may
help identify many of the ef-
fects of alcohol and drug im-
pairment, we are unaware of
existing research demonstrat-
ing the robust effectiveness
of these systems in detecting
alcohol impairment,” Scott
Schmidt, vice president for
Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety
A universal ignition interlock used to combat drunken driving. Unlike ignition interlocks in use today, mostly
for people charged or convicted of drunken driving, the new technology would be built into the vehicle.
safety policy at the Alliance
for Automotive Innovation,
said in comments submitted to
NHTSA in January.
At best, Schmidt said, the
current driver-assist tech-
nology can only infer that a
person is impaired, unlike
DADSS, which is intended
to make reliable and accurate
readings of a driver before the
car gets on the road. He said
it’s also possible that current
technology might fail to inter-
vene with a “high functioning”
driver who is relatively able to
operate the vehicle while under
the influence.
“As a result, we believe that
DADSS research should be
supported and completed as
an agency priority,” Schmidt
wrote.
NHTSA also supports fur-
ther research and development
of DADSS, an ignition inter-
lock device that would prevent
the vehicle from starting if it
determines that the driver has
a blood alcohol level above a
certain threshold. Such breath-
alyzer-like devices have be-
come widespread over the past
three decades as states imple-
mented various programs to
stop recidivism among drivers
who were charged with or con-
victed of a DUI.
Unlike existing interlocks,
however, DADSS technology is
intended to become standard
equipment in all automobiles
and require no effort from the
driver to take a reading. The
driver would not be required
to blow into a tube, for exam-
ple. Instead, DADSS would
analyze the driver’s ambient
breath. The nonprofit is also
developing a touch-based sen-
sor similar to thermometers
and blood-oxygen gauges ap-
plied to a finger tip.
Robert Strassburger, presi-
dent of Automotive Coalition
for Traffic Safety, said the pan-
demic had set back develop-
ment of DADSS by at least a
year because of limits on re-
search involving human sub-
jects and disruptions to the
supply chain for electronic
components. He said the coa-
lition is ahead of the usual 20-
year timeline for research and
development of a major traf-
fic safety component with its
breath-analyzing interlock.
“We still need to make the
sensor more sensitive to alco-
hol and further shrink its size
so it’s more easily integrated
into cars,” Strassburger said. He
said the touch-based technol-
ogy is expected to reach com-
mercial fleets by 2023, followed
by a consumer version two
years later.
NHTSA has contributed $55
million to developing DADSS,
matched by $16 million from
the auto industry, an agency
spokeswoman said. The federal
agency is also exploring other
possible technologies to reduce
drunken driving, having issued
a “request for information” to
manufacturers and research-
ers in November. A report on
the findings is expected later
this year.
Joan Claybrook, a former
president of Public Citizen
who headed NHTSA during
the Carter administration, lik-
ened the push for anti-DUI
technology to the resistance to
installing air bags in vehicles.
“Fifty thousand lives have
been saved by air bags, and
the auto industry fought it like
mad, even though they in-
vented it,” Claybrook said.
At a Senate subcommittee
hearing in April, Sen. Ben Ray
Luján, D-N.M., a Reduce Im-
paired Driving for Everyone
Act co-sponsor and victim of
a drunk driver, expressed ur-
gency as he questioned John
Bozzella, president of Alliance
for Automotive Innovation.
“Mr. Bozzella, have you ever
been hit by a drunk driver?”
Luján asked.
“No, I have not,” Bozzella
answered.
“I have,” Luján said. “I got
hit head-on by a drunk driver
29 years ago. And there were
many nights that I’d be driv-
ing home after that accident,
or driving anywhere, and all
I would see were headlights
coming at me, and it scared me
to death.”
Luján, in an interview last
week, said he still recalls the
feeling of shock and disori-
entation he felt moments af-
ter the crash. He also recalled
seeing an empty child carrier
in the other car and fearing
that perhaps a child had been
flung from the wreckage. It
turned out that the other car’s
only occupant was the drunk
driver, and both he and Luján
emerged from the crash rela-
tively uninjured.
“The point of this, I’m here
to tell the story, (but) there are
so many people who died,”
Luján said. “There’s no good
reason why auto manufac-
turers are not required to in-
clude technology in their vehi-
cles which is readily available
to prevent drunken driving
crashes from happening.”
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