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Drunk driving kills thousands each year across the nation. And over the weekend, we received a painful reminder of that in Monroe County. We were supposed to be playing an party for saying not a funeral. Could a new law on the way have helped prevent another needless tragedy?
I'm Brian Fisher, and this is the Daily J. Took his have been killed several other people seriously injured after a vehicle crashes into him in Row County Boat Club. The Monroe County Sheriff's Office says the crash happened at about 3 p.m. at the Swan Creek Boat Club on Branch Hill Street near Blanchett in Berlin Township.
Sheriff Troy Goodnuff during a press conference last night says there were a total of 15 victims. Nine were taken to area hospitals by ambulance and medical helicopter with serious life-threatening injuries. A total of three children and six adults were transported. Several others were transported by private vehicle to local hospitals.
Unfortunately, in tragedy, two of the victims were pronounced deceased at the scene. This includes an eight-year-old female and a five-year-old male who are siblings of each other. Audio courtesy of WXMIZ, the 66-year-old female driver of the vehicle was arrested for suspected drunk driving. The investigation is ongoing.
That was W.W.J.'s Greg Bowman and Chris Kaiser breaking down what we knew following a tragic crash into the Swan Boat Club in Monroe County. The crash killed eight-year-old Alana Phillips and her four-year-old brother Zane Phillips as well as seriously injured nine others celebrating a birthday inside. The driver, Shidaaster, was allegedly intoxicated behind a wheel and is now facing two counts of second-degree murder along with many other charges. At Shidaaster's arraignment, several of the victims' family members got the opportunity to speak, but listener discretion is advised.
I was there. I seen where my daughter, my mom, my sister, my nephew from the opposite side of the family. My sister's three children. We were supposed to be playing at a birthday party for Zane, not a funeral.
No, when you have medical conditions, you should never get kind of wheel weather. You are drinking or not. Taking medications, they tell you not to drink, but she's still chose to drink. She's still chosen to get into that vehicle.
I will never look at the month of April the same ever again. As tragic as this story is, what is even more tragic is that stories like this aren't all that rare. Michigan State Police Lieutenant Mike Shaw spoke with fellow Daily J host, Zack Clark, for an episode on drunk driving back in 2022. Five-year trend, we're seeing the numbers going back off.
If you compare them to 2020, we saw there was about 2043 drinking involved crashes. And now in 2021, we saw it was in 1945. It's kind of flat, but it's still an issue because for us, the biggest thing is this is a crime that doesn't have to happen. It's super simple.
If you don't drink and get behind the wheel, there's a crime no longer exists. People don't die. People don't go to jail. There's no crash cars.
There's no anything. There's so many different things that you can do to avoid doing that. People either attack a cat, taking a bus, pick you back ride with your friend if that's what it takes. You have to put a blamer it is.
And that's not a criminal that can miss that crime. So what is being done to prevent tragedies like this from occurring in the first place? Well, something already has been done. It just hasn't been implemented yet.
Here is US Representative Debbie Dingell in a conversation with W.W.J.s Jeff Gilbert. We did pass provisions as part of the infrastructure bill that included the Hulk drunk driving act, which I introduced to the house in Ben Ray, Lujan from New Mexico joined me in the Senate and we got it through. And it will require automakers to install anti-junct driving technology into new automobiles to determine what the technology will be. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has to undergo a rulemaking process.
And they're currently in the early stages of collecting data on the different technologies to inform their rulemaking. So it sounds like what the NTSB said and we're getting into the whole government alphabet soup here is that they support what's already in process. Is that a fair way to put it? That's a very good way to put it.
The legislation that we passed was technology neutral. As part of the infrastructure bill in 2021, the HALT Act was passed following the tragic deaths of the Abos family in 2019. The family was headed home towards Northville from Florida when they were struck and killed by an under the influence wrong way driver in Kentucky. The HALT Act requires all cars by 2026 to have some sort of alcohol detection technology.
But what will that look like, a breathalyzer in your car? Apparently that's not the case. One thing that we should make clear is that you know those breathalyzers that are sometimes required for people that might have a record of drunk driving, that's not really what they're looking to do here. The keyword is passive.
So it would be sensors in your vehicle, like breath sensors or touch sensors that can somehow determine whether or not you're impaired. And there's going to be some parameters for that and it's agency that will be issuing the rule for that will be putting out some more details. But yeah, I mean the aim is really to prevent impaired drivers from operating their vehicles and to ultimately you know make US roadway safer. That was Audrey LaForrest, who covers the federal government for the automotive news.
As she details all the passive ways the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is looking to implement these safety measures. She adds that one such way is through touch. The auto industry has been working with NHTSA to develop what they call the driver alcohol detection system for safety technology. And that's the path of technology that we're talking about.
So it features a breath and touch base of some to measure drivers' blood alcohol level. That's still under development and even in terms of the requirement and infrastructure law for this technology or for impaired driving prevention technology to be in new vehicles. I don't know if it's been really determined yet what exactly that technology will look like if it will be dad's as it's known or if it will be something like that that's slightly different. So to be determined.
As of January 2024, NHTSA has begun the rulemaking phase of this technology. And by November of this year, the United States Department of Transportation must complete the process of setting a final standard for impaired driving prevention technology. What did Lieutenant Mike Shaw think about this law back when Zack spoke to him in 2022? I'm a personal accountability kind of guy.
I'm now looking for a government oversight. You know, it shouldn't take me and my patrol car to tell you that it's a bad idea to get the behind the wheel drunk. So a lot of that is enforcement because we have to have enforcement. If we just rely on the education or talking to people and stuff like that, it's not going to work out because there's no stick that goes with the carrot, so to speak.
So there have to be enforcement with it. But again, I'm strictly a personal accountability guy and that's kind of telling people again, the only crime that can be totally prevented by such a simple task of getting a designated driver. And I would be remiss if we don't talk about we were seeing a lot of people education wise, I believe that they can smoke marijuana and get behind the wheel and drive and they'll be perfectly fine. We're more than happy to lock you up and put you in jail.
If that's what it takes, it should not do it. But we would prefer that you just didn't do it at all. One thing we have yet to discuss is the cost of this law. It should not matter how much this technology is going to cost if it saves lives.
But surely this change does not come cheap and automakers will care about that. Here is Audrey again. Cost is a big question mark here depending on what the technology ultimately looked like in the end. When I reached out to the auto industry on this, specifically the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which is a trade association here in Washington DC that represents most of the major automakers in the US.
They've said that it won't have been committed to supporting both public and private efforts to address alcohol and pure driving. But yeah, in terms of how it affects vehicle costs and all the above, I'm not sure yet. The cost of these alcohol detection systems won't be cheap, but the cost in human lives lost due to drunk driving will always be more. And one has to wonder if this technology had been in place, could this most recent tragedy have been prevented?
Thanks to Representative Debbie Dingell, Lieutenant Mike Shaw, Audrey LaForrest and Jeff Gilbert for lending their expertise in reporting to this episode. And as always, this podcast wouldn't be possible without W.W.J.'s digital team. Check out www.NewsRadio.com for the top local news stories on demand 24-7.