When President-elect Donald Trump was preparing to launch his now-defunct vodka business, he wanted all the profits to go toward efforts to end drunken driving.

“It was at the Trump Tower 27th floor,” said Chuck Hurley, former CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, recalling a 2006 meeting about accepting the funds. “The first meeting was with Bernie Goldstein, the No. 2 person in the Trump Organization, and several of the vice presidents were involved.”

MADD, a storied advocacy group that has played a role in major road safety initiatives of the last five decades, ultimately declined the money due to its policy at the time of refusing any contributions from the alcohol industry.

Still, Hurley and other staff at MADD said the gesture sticks out. It gives them hope that the once-and-future president will be an ally to their goal of preventing the roughly 10,000 road deaths caused by drunken drivers annually when he returns to the White House in January.

Vehicle safety groups are on the verge of a crucial policy win after the Biden administration and Congress passed a law in 2021 directing federal regulators to require anti-drunken driving technology in all new vehicles. That standard is not yet in place, however, and it’s unclear whether the incoming Trump administration will follow through on the three-year-old promise or let it die on the vine along with other Biden-era initiatives.

“Trump himself understands what addiction can do,” said Stephanie Manning, MADD’s chief government affairs officer. “This cannot end up on the cutting room floor. We want to work with the Trump administration. We just want to solve this problem.”

On one hand, Trump might wish to minimize regulatory pressure on an industry that has so far resisted widespread adoption of available, life-saving technology that can detect impaired driving and prevent vehicle operation. The conservative Heritage Foundation, which authored Project 2025 and has emerged as a frequent source for staffing the new administration, has vocally opposed the yet-to-be-released rule.

On the other, Trump could be motivated by his personal approach to alcohol. Famously, he does not drink on account of a vow to Fred Trump Jr., his late brother who died from a heart attack caused by his alcohol addiction.

Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

Former Republican congressman Sean Duffy, Trump’s pick to head the Department of Transportation, also has a personal tie to ongoing efforts to end drunken, impaired and distracted driving. Duffy’s wife, Rachel, was involved in a 1996 car crash that killed her boyfriend and another passenger when a driver asleep at the wheel hit her vehicle head-on.

If confirmed to lead the DOT, Duffy will preside over the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as it prepares to meet its congressional mandate.

Waiting for federal rule

Michigan members of Congress led a push to require anti-drunken driving technology in vehicles after a horrific crash in January 2019 killed a Northville family as they returned from vacation. The driver, who also died in the crash, had a blood alcohol level nearly four times the legal limit, according to police.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Ann Arbor, sponsored the HALT Act in the aftermath of that tragedy. The bill’s full title was the Honoring Abbas Family Legacy to Terminate Drunk Driving Act, a reference to the slain Northville family.

The HALT Act directed the Transportation Department to establish a motor vehicle safety standard for mandatory, in-vehicle technology capable of detecting and stopping drunken or impaired driving. The measure was designed to be technology-neutral, meaning it would not require one particular type of vehicle addition to meet new safety standards.

Congress passed the act as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law enacted in November 2021 under President Joe Biden. The law set a Nov. 15, 2024, goal to finalize standards, but NHTSA was unable to meet that deadline.

The agency made a preliminary regulatory filing in January 2024 seeking feedback from the public about the eventual standard it will set, but it has not yet issued a draft standard. Safety advocates said that while they are eager for the rule, they do not blame the agency for failing to finish the job during the Biden administration.

“It’s still underfunded for the job that it needs to do,” said Will Wallace, a safety policy analyst at Consumer Reports. “This is an agency whose role is to keep all the millions upon millions of cars safe in this country, and to be on top of new technology in cars that’s evolving all the time.”

He compared NHTSA’s roughly $2.6 billion budget in 2023 to the Federal Aviation Administration, which was about $24 billion. The agency has also, except for three months in 2022, been without a Senate-confirmed administrator since the end of the Obama administration in early 2017.

NHTSA said it does not expect to issue a final rule this year on anti-drunken driving technology. The agency also noted that, if necessary, it can extend the window for a final rule by three years but must provide annual status reports to Congress in the meantime.

If there is no rule within 10 years, the agency’s only requirement is similar: another report to Congress.

Cathy Chase, director of the lobbying group Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said she is not optimistic about a standard from NHTSA coming out in the near future. She pointed to the recently concluded rulemaking process for automatic emergency braking technology.

“That is technology that is already in most new cars, and still, it took 10 years to get that over the finish line,” she said in a phone interview.

Chuck Farmer, a vice president of research for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, is more optimistic. Farmer said he expects a draft rule by spring 2025.

‘Perfect the enemy of good’

Wallace said that — at least on the technology side — the conditions are ripe for NHTSA to issue a rule, even if it requires tweaking later.

“We’re not where we were 10 years ago, where the research really seemed stalled,” Wallace said. “Instead, we’re in a place where the research and the testing of the technology seems to be proceeding at pace.”

He and Manning, the MADD government affairs chief, noted promising developments from a public-private research partnership into anti-drunken driving technology called “DADSS,” which stands for Driver Alcohol Detection System.

The partnership, founded in 2008, has focused on developing a breath system and a touch system designed to precisely quantify alcohol levels. The breath system does so in a “passive, non-invasive way as a driver breathes normally, when in the driver’s seat,” according to DADSS. The touch system uses sensors to “measure blood alcohol levels under the skin’s surface by shining an infrared light into the fingertip or palm of the driver.”

Hurley cheered the success of DADSS. The former MADD head described the technology and research effort as a “moonshot” at its inception but said, “we’ve reached the moon.” He also applauded the auto industry for its role in lobbying for the creation of the partnership.

Wallace said that the current stage of research into DADDS and other technologies is sufficient for the federal government to set a standard automakers will eventually need to meet.

In a public comment on NHTSA’s January filing, Consumer Reports pointed to technology that already exists within many vehicles to detect impairment or distraction. General Motors Co., for example, has a Driver Attention Assist system powered by in-vehicle cameras in many of its new models.

The consumer group has lauded GM for those features, and Hurley noted that new vehicle safety ratings in Europe will begin to consider such features beginning in model year 2026.

“For far too long, the perfect has been the enemy of the good,” Wallace said, noting he thought the January filing got too bogged down in considering other kinds of driver impairment.

“The technology needs to be good enough to get out there and save lives, but it doesn’t have to be fully developed at the time a standard is promulgated. Safety standards can lead technology development, and it can encourage investments.”

He added: “This is a congressional mandate, though, and NHTSA needs to get something out the door,” a sentiment that most but not all safety advocates agreed with.

“I have a bit of a problem with ‘don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good,‘” Cathy Chase said. “Because it’s used very often in terms of autonomous vehicles and with like, ‘Just get them on the road, and let’s see how it goes.’”

Chase continued: “It’s not NHTSA’s M.O. to put out a rule without crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s, so I appreciate that they do their job, their due diligence, and make sure that you know their final rules are backed by research and science.”

Conservative opposition

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, despite its moniker, passed with moderate support from Republicans in the U.S. Senate and meager support in the House. The GOP has criticized many parts of the landmark funding package, and one group in particular has taken aim at the anti-drunken driving directive to NHTSA.

Heritage Action For America, the issue advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, led an online effort to voice concerns about the rule when NHTSA made its initial regulatory filing seeking public feedback in January. The group provided a script for individuals to use when submitting their comments.

“The federal government has no business mandating vehicular technology that would passively monitor me, the driver, at all times,” the script reads. “I object to the idea that I am presumed guilty of ‘impaired’ driving until cleared by a robot. And I do not want technology to slow or pull my car off the road while I’m driving.”

It continues: “Not every problem requires government intervention, but every government intervention creates problems. This regulation will drive up costs and create a whole new set of risks.”

The script also describes concerns over data privacy, danger to others from features that autonomously maneuver a car without driver input, and the possibility of false positives in alcohol or other impairment detection that cause a vehicle response when drivers are not actually impaired.

Of the 18,254 comments submitted on the filing, Heritage Action noted that 12,275 of them — about 70% — came from a comment portal it set up.

Wallace said that Consumer Reports — on this issue and others — is highly concerned about consumer data privacy and agrees that any final standard should include protections. He also emphasized how important it is for policymakers and advocates to remain focused on stopping drunken driving without becoming overly concerned by edge cases that could result from the new technologies.

“Drunk driving is a scourge on our highways, on our roads throughout the country,” he said. “Everybody’s gonna need to push to get this across the finish line.”

“We’ll save 10,000 lives a year,” said MADD’s Manning, referencing the number of people killed annually in drunken driving crashes. “The only thing that comes close to that number in terms of lives saved is the seat belt. This is the next seat belt.”

“Now it’s time to get the rules done,” she added, noting that MADD has relationships with bipartisan leaders on Capitol Hill. “It doesn’t matter who controls Congress or who controls the White House. Everybody should want to solve this problem.”