A Push To Have Cars Say ‘No’ To Drunk Drivers
The Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety Program, funded largely by the federal government, seeks to develop devices that will automatically detect when a driver is intoxicated with a blood-alcohol concentration over the legal limit.
Courtesy of Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety Program
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As cars become smarter and safer, some members of Congress want to require them to be built to prevent drunk driving.
Sens. Tom Udall, D-N.M., and Rick Scott, R-Fla., introduced legislation last week that would make it mandatory for all new cars and trucks to come loaded with passive, virtually unnoticeable, alcohol detection systems by 2024.
The Reduce Impaired Driving for Everyone Act of 2019, called the RIDE Act, would also allocate $10 million to continue government-funded research into new breath and touch-based sensors designed to monitor a driver’s blood alcohol level in real-time, without having the driver do anything. The measure would set aside another $25 million to install and test the technology in government-owned fleets.
The bill follows a similar effort in the House by Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan.
Udall said he’s been haunted by the pain and havoc drunk driving accidents wreak on families for decades. “When you meet with families, and when you see the devastation that this causes, it’s something that really moves you,” he said in an interview.
During the 1990s, when Udall was New Mexico’s attorney general, he agonized over how to reduce the state’s drunk driving related crashes, which at the time were the highest in the country per capita.
“We kept trying to wonder, how do we get out of this?” he recalled.
The answer, at least in part, was technology. New Mexico became one of the first states to require convicted drunk drivers to use a breathalyzer to start a car.
But in a world where driverless cars are being tested, Udall said he’s become exasperated by the lack of innovation and buy-in from the auto industry. He is urging auto manufacturers to partner and fellow lawmakers to commit to a five-year plan to develop less cumbersome and more consumer friendly devices.
Helen Witty, president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, also noted the auto industry’s reluctance to mandated safety improvements.
“I don’t think the industry wanted to put in airbags or seat belts,” Witty said. “Think about how those … were a fight to get through.”
But now, she said, several companies have cameras that warn drivers if they appear impaired or have taken their eyes off the road. Those types of advances have given Witty hope that automakers will be persuaded by consumers, who want more safety features.
But she is impatient for that to happen. In 2000, Witty’s 16-year-old daughter was killed by another teen who’d had too many tequila shots and was driving 65 miles per hour in a 30 mph zone. According to Witty, the young driver, who was drunk and high on marijuana, “lost control of her car and spun off the road onto the bike path” where her daughter was rollerblading.
“And so my daughter, Helen Marie, looked up and saw the car coming toward her and there was nothing she could do at all but die,” Witty said.
It’s a tragic story that Witty has been telling for years to educate the public. She’s hopes the message will help spare other families the pain of her own.
“Not only did her life end, the life that we had as a family ended. … We had to figure out how to live again,” she added.
Drunk driving fatalities have declined significantly since the 1980s. But according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration they still account for about a third of all traffic deaths. In 2017, more than 10,800 people were killed in drunk driving incidents.
Since 2008, the federal government has spent $50 million on a project between NHTSA and an automaker group called Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety to develop the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety.
The endeavor is overseen by Robert Strassburger, who represents the automakers. He expects a breathalyzer-type product to be ready for licensing by next year. While the ultimate goal of the project is aimed at creating something that detects alcohol without the driver doing anything, Strassburger said, they’re not there yet. After more than a decade of work, researchers have managed to develop a more streamlined version of a breathalyzer — a small device built into the driver-side door that the driver blows into.
However, the device is can’t detect a precise blood alcohol level yet. Instead, it can only determine the presence of alcohol, Strassburger said.
So it can’t tell the difference between someone who’s had one glass of wine and someone who’s had four shots of whiskey. Still, Strassburger said, there’s already a market for the device, including trucking companies with a zero-tolerance policy for their drivers or parents with underage children.
Strassburger says there’s plenty of momentum to make vehicles with technology that keeps dangerous drivers off the road.
The question is how that will happen and when.
Horses Have Continued To Die As New Season Begins At Santa Anita Park
The Santa Anita race track near Los Angeles is preparing for the high profile Breeders’ Cup next month. But horse deaths have continued this season, despite government investigations.
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It’s a new season at the Santa Anita Racetrack outside Los Angeles, but one troubling aspect has not changed. Horses keep dying. One died over the weekend, bringing the total to 34 since December. That’s despite warnings from California Governor Gavin Newsom that he will shut down horse racing in the state if the industry doesn’t clean up its act, and it’s despite a criminal investigation from the L.A. district attorney’s office. Ben Bergman has more.
(SOUNDBITE OF BUGLE PLAYING)
BEN BERGMAN, BYLINE: Looking out across the track to the palm trees and the mountains in the distance, it’s hard to imagine a more picturesque setting for horse racing.
(SOUNDBITE OF HORSES RACING)
BERGMAN: On a recent 87 degree fall day, 2-year-old fillies – those are young females – competed for a $50,000 purse.
(SOUNDBITE OF HORSES RACING)
BERGMAN: There were less than 5,000 fans in the stands. Attendance is down this season. On Saturday a 3-year-old gelding broke his front left ankle and was euthanized. Last month a colt broke both front ankles and had to be put down a month after testing positive for an illegally high dose of painkillers.
KATHY GUILLERMO: I’m angry.
BERGMAN: Kathy Guillermo is senior vice president of PETA.
GUILLERMO: I’m angry because we asked the Los Angeles district attorney to launch an investigation seven months ago, but we still have no results from those investigations.
BERGMAN: The DA’s office wouldn’t comment. Guillermo says it’s unacceptable that racing continues.
GUILLERMO: I think we need to suspend racing until we have solid answers. I just don’t think a sport is worth the lives of these animals.
BERGMAN: So why not halt competition?
ALEXIS PODESTA: I mean, I think that’s a good question.
BERGMAN: Alexis Podesta oversees the California Horse Racing Board, which regulates the industry.
PODESTA: I would respond to it by saying that this is a big industry. There are a lot of jobs and livelihoods involved in it. I would want us to be very cautious about ending an industry and killing a number of jobs without all of the facts.
BERGMAN: Podesta says racing has become much safer in California because of new rules like increased drug testing and exams. Thanks to a new state law, the board now also has the power to suspend races. Last season it tried to do that at Santa Anita but didn’t have the authority to do so. Podesta says there’s also this.
PODESTA: Over the last decade we’ve seen a fairly dramatic decline in the number of horse fatalities during racing.
BERGMAN: This will surprise a lot of people. Despite all the attention, according to the racing board, during the last fiscal year, there were actually slightly fewer deaths than normal at Santa Anita, and statewide, there were 144 fatalities. That’s by far the lowest in the past decade. The board’s chief veterinarian Dr. Rick Arthur says most people haven’t thought about how dangerous the sport is until recently.
RICK ARTHUR: I think historically, horse racing has kind of lived in a bubble, and I think the anger of the public about these fatalities has made people wake up.
BERGMAN: Earlier this year the embattled Stronach Group, which owns Santa Anita, appointed Dr. Dionne Benson at its first chief veterinary officer. She says any number of deaths is unacceptable.
DIONNE BENSON: Our goal and our true finish line is to have zero fatalities. Whether we ever reach that is a different story, but we have to keep moving in that direction.
BERGMAN: Next month one of horse racing’s biggest events, the Breeders’ Cup, will be held at Santa Anita. Organizers had considered moving the race, but they decided not to because they said the track enacted effective and meaningful changes.
For NPR News, I’m Ben Bergman in Los Angeles.
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Get Your Flu Shot Now, Doctors Advise, Especially If You’re Pregnant
Though complications from the flu can be deadly for people who are especially vulnerable, including pregnant women and their newborns, typically only about half of pregnant women get the needed vaccination, U.S. statistics show.
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October marks the start of a new flu season, with a rise in likely cases already showing up in Louisiana and other spots, federal statistics show.
The advice from federal health officials remains clear and consistent: Get the flu vaccine as soon as possible, especially if you’re pregnant or have asthma or another underlying condition that makes you more likely to catch a bad case.
Make no mistake: Complications from the flu are scary, says Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., who is part of a committee that advises federal health officials on immunization practices.
“As we get older, more of us get heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, asthma,” Schaffner says. “Those diseases predispose us to complications of flu — pneumonia, hospitalization or death. We need to make vaccination a routine part of chronic health management.”
Federal recommendations, he says, are that “anyone and everyone 6 months old and older in the United States should get vaccinated each and every year.” People 65 and above and pregnant women, along with patients who have underlying medical issues, should make haste to get that shot, if they haven’t already, Schaffner says.
Within a typical year, about two-thirds of people over 65 get vaccinated against the flu, studies show, compared with 45% of adults overall and 55% to 60% of children. But only about half of pregnant women get vaccinated, and immunization rates for people with chronic diseases hovers around 30% to 40%.
Take the case of JoJo O’Neal, a 55-year-old radio personality and music show host in Orlando, Fla., who was diagnosed with adult onset asthma in 2004 at age 40. For years she didn’t get the flu vaccine, figuring her healthful diet, intense exercise and overall fitness would be protective enough.
“I skated along for a lot of years,” O’Neal says, “and then, finally, in 2018 — boom! It hit me, and it hit me hard.” She was out of work for nearly two weeks and could barely move. She was extremely nauseated and had an excruciating headache and aching body, she says. “I spent a lot of time just sitting on my couch feeling miserable.”
O’Neal says it takes a lot to “shut her down,” but this bout with the flu certainly did. Even more upsetting, she says, she passed the virus on to her sister who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Fortunately, neither she nor her sister had to be hospitalized, but they certainly worried about it.
“We have lung issues and worry about breathing, so having the flu created lots of anxiety,” O’Neal says. This year, she’s not taking any chances: She has already gotten her flu shot.
That’s absolutely the right decision, says Dr. MeiLan Han, professor of internal medicine in the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Michigan Health System and a national spokesperson for the American Lung Association.
If generally healthy people contract the flu, they may feel sick for a week or more, she says. But for someone with underlying lung conditions, it can take longer to recover from the flu — three to four weeks. “What I worry about most with these patients,” Han says, “is hospitalization and respiratory failure.”
In fact, Han says, 92% of adults hospitalized for the flu have at least one underlying chronic condition such as diabetes, asthma, or kidney or liver disorders.
When people with underlying lung conditions contract the flu, she says, “the virus goes right to the lung, and it can make a situation where it’s hard to breathe even harder.”
Other chronic health conditions — diabetes, HIV and cancer, among them — impair the immune system, Han explains, making people with those conditions unable to mount a robust response to the flu virus without the immunization boost of a flu shot.
That means the inflammation and infection when they get the flu can become more severe, she says.
Even many of her own patients don’t realize how bad a case of the flu can be, Han says.
“People often tell me, ‘That’s not me. I’ve never had the flu. I’m not at risk, and I’m not around people who might give me the flu.’ “
O’Neal says she’d always figured she wasn’t at risk either — until the flu flattened her.
Healthy pregnant women, too, are more prone to complications and hospitalization if they contract the flu and are strongly urged by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and OB-GYNs to get vaccinated against both influenza and pertussis. Yet the majority of mothers-to-be surveyed in the United States — 65% — have not been immunized against those two illnesses, according to a recent CDC Vital Signs report.
Some women mistakenly worry that the flu vaccine isn’t safe for them or their babies. “I think some of the fears about safety are certainly understandable, but they’re misinformed,” says Dr. Alicia Fry, chief of the epidemiology and prevention branch of the CDC’s Influenza Division.
The evidence is clear, Fry says: The vaccine is extremely safe. And she points to a recent study showing that immunization against flu reduces the risk of flu hospitalization among pregnant women by 40%.
As for worries that the woman’s vaccination might not be safe for her developing fetus, Fry says the opposite is true. When a pregnant woman is immunized, antibodies that fight the flu virus cross the placenta and can protect her baby in those critical months before and after birth.
“It can prevent 70% of the illness associated with flu viruses in the baby,” Fry says. “So it’s a double protection: Mom is protected, and the baby’s protected.” Infants can’t get the flu vaccine themselves until they are 6 months old.
Now, the vaccine won’t protect against all strains of the flu virus that may be circulating. But Schaffner says the shot is still very much worth getting this year and every year.
“Although it’s not perfect, the vaccine we have today actually prevents a lot of disease completely,” he says. “And even if you do get the flu, it’s likely to be less severe, and you’ll be less likely to develop complications.”
