NTBS:Use ignition locks for all drunken drivers

Safety agency urges all states to begin using devices.

WAShINGTON — Every state should require convicted drunken drivers, including first-time offenders, to use devices that prevent them from starting a car’s engine if their breath tests positive for alcohol, the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.

The ignition interlock devices — already required for all convicted drunken drivers in 17 states — are currently the best available solution to reducing drunken driving deaths, which account for about a third of the nation’s more than 32,000 traffic deaths a year, the board said.

Breathalyzers are mounted on a vehicle’s dashboard. If the driver’s breath-alcohol concentration is greater than the device’s programmed limit — usually a blood alcohol concentration of 0.02 percent or 0.04 percent — then the engine won’t start.

The board also urged the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to speed up its research effort with automakers to develop systems that can determine a driver’s blood alcohol concentration using infrared light when the driver presses an ignition button. The vehicle won’t start if the alcohol concentration is too high.

The technology, which is sometimes breathbased rather than touchactivated, is already in use in some workplace drugtesting programs. If the technology were incorporated into all new vehicles, eventually all drivers would be alcohol-tested before driving. That could potentially prevent an estimated 7,000 drunkendriving deaths a year, the board said.

The five-member board made the unanimous recommendations after reviewing evidence that an average of 360 people a year are killed when drivers turn the wrong way into the face of oncoming traffic on highspeed highways.

The board’s study analyzed data from 1,566 crashes from 2004 to 2009, as well as nine wrong-way collisions NTSB directly investigated. In 59 percent of the accidents, wrong-way drivers had blood-alcohol levels more than twice the legal limit, researchers said. In another 10 percent of the crashes, drivers had alcohol levels between 0.08 and 0.14.

The board’s recommendations are likely to be strongly opposed by the alcohol industry. The American Beverage Institute, which represents about 8,000 chain restaurants in the U.S., said mandatory ignition interlock devices should be reserved for “hard-core” drunken drivers.