Gillen Drunk Driving Bill Hits Congress Floor

ROCKVILLE CENTRE, NY. — U.S. Representative Laura Gillen has partnered with Republican Mike Lawler and Democrat Debbie Dingell to bring a new bill to the senate floor, introducing the Drunk Driving Prevention and Enforcement Act Wednesday.

The representatives behind the act seek to incentivize development and adoption of anti-drunk driving technology in passenger vehicles. The plan to do that, the bill reads, includes a $45 million cash prize for the developers of effective, consumer-ready anti-drunk driving technology.

As it’s currently written, the bill would also establish a centralized traffic enforcement center within the federal Department of Transportation, staffed by the Department of Transportation, Department of Justice and employees from other federal agencies. That enforcement center, the bill states, would provide highway safety and law enforcement agencies around the country with support, tools and training to more effectively police hazardous driving. An additional $5 million are set aside in the bill’s text for the creation and operation of the traffic center.

Finally, the bill would create a “national drug involved crash data collection system,” which would include toxicology data from fatal or serious crashes collected by states, link crash data with medical data, and report annually to congress on trends in substance types and geographic patterns found in that database.

“Each day, 34 American families lose a loved one to a drunk driving crash,” Gillen said. “Drunk driving remains the leading cause of death on our highways and far too many Long Island families know the pain of a life cut short. I’m proud to lead this long-overdue, bipartisan effort to require life-saving technology in new vehicles, strengthen state and local enforcement and create the first national system to collect drug-involved crash data so we can better understand and address emerging threats on our roads."

The bill is currently in the hands of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, of which Gillen is a member.