Lucas: This year, let’s make our roads safer.
Drunk driving is one of the biggest dangers on our roads, claiming more than 10,000 lives each year on average. As the Nassau County District Attorney, I made it a priority to hold drunk drivers accountable for their crimes, strengthen New York’s DWI laws, and develop innovative programs to raise awareness and help prevent people from driving drunk. We’ve made real progress here in New York and across the country, but we have a lot more work to do and a lot more lives to save.
We have to hold drunk drivers accountable, but the only way to dramatically reduce the number of DWI-related fatalities is to keep them off the road in the first place.
On New Year’s Eve, I introduced a bill to require all new cars to be equipped with advanced DWI-prevention technology within 10 years. The government and leading automakers are working right now to finalize prototypes of sophisticated breath-based and touch-based devices that detect a driver’s blood alcohol content. You don’t have to breathe into a tube – you get behind the wheel, touch your finger to a sensor, breathing normally, and if you’re over the legal limit, the car won’t drive.
Studies have shown that requiring this technology in all new cars could prevent 85% of all DWI-related deaths over 15 years – that’s nearly 60,000 lives.
Utilizing this technology has the potential to put an end to drunk driving once and for all. That’s the kind of future I hope to see, and with your support, I’ll keep fighting to make it a reality.
Kathleen