US to mandate AI anti-drunk driving detection by 2027, the privacy black hole behind 99.9% accuracy

Section 24220 of the U.S. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021 mandates that all new passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. must be equipped with passive drunk and impaired driving detection technology starting in September 2027. However, three major issues—technological bottlenecks, strong opposition from automakers, and legal loopholes regarding biometric data protection—remain unresolved to this day. (Context: UC Berkeley study on "AI brain fog": 14% of office workers driven crazy by Agents and automation) (Background: Author of Sapiens: AI is becoming a threat, it has hacked the operating system of human civilization! Like nuclear weapons) A tweet that garnered over 13 million views on X ignited the controversy: on April 25, 2026, the account @pubity described the upcoming U.S. vehicle AI mandate as "constant surveillance," triggering a massive public backlash. But the actual legal text is more complex and the controversy deeper than that statement suggests. According to Section 24220 of the U.S. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021, all new passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. must be equipped with "advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology" by September 2027. This is not the "full-time video surveillance" claimed by @pubity, but rather the "passively monitor driver’s performance" explicitly required by the act—the gap between the two is the core of the entire controversy. Every new car in the U.S. will be required by law to have tech that puts constant surveillance on the driver by 2027. AI in your car will determine if you're sober and fit to drive, automatically turning off the vehicle if it determines you're a danger on the road. pic.twitter.com/7SDbAJ2GyC — Pubity (@pubity) April 25, 2026 The IIJA was officially enacted in 2021, with the implementation task falling to the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration). However, as of early 2026, the NHTSA has missed the original November 2024 deadline for the final rule, and the entire project remains in the review phase. According to the current timeline, new cars will only begin to be equipped with the relevant technology by the end of 2026 at the earliest, and September 2027 is the mandatory implementation date for all new passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. In other words, the buffer window left by the government for the industry is shorter than imagined, and the technology itself has a bottleneck that is almost impossible to ignore. Currently, there are two main technological paths competing for this mandatory specification order: The first is "breath-based"—embedding sensors in the steering column to passively capture the driver's exhaled alcohol concentration without requiring any active cooperation from the driver. The second is "touch-based"—setting infrared sensors on the start button or steering wheel to measure blood alcohol concentration (BAC) through skin optical characteristics when the driver holds the steering wheel or presses the start button. The NHTSA explicitly requires in its regulations that the system must achieve 99.9% accuracy to be allowed on the road. This number seems high, but it is more alarming when converted into real-world scenarios—even with 99.9% accuracy, there could still be tens of millions of misjudgments every year, locking perfectly sober drivers out of their cars or forcing engines to shut down. Currently, no mass-produced solution in the industry has cleared this threshold, and automaker opposition continues to escalate as a result. Beyond the technical controversy, the legal loophole regarding biometric data is the part of this discussion least highlighted by the media. While IIJA Section 24220 explicitly "does not require" automakers to share drivers' biometric data, it also "does not prohibit" them from doing so. More importantly, there is currently no federal law in the U.S. that regulates the ownership and usage restrictions of biometric data collected by vehicles while in operation. This means that automakers can technically and legally hold, sell, or license the breath data, skin optical characteristics, and calculated blood alcohol concentration records of every driver—as long as they state it clearly in their privacy policies. The commercial value of this data to insurance companies, advertisers, and even law enforcement is obviously self-evident. The automakers' resistance to this regulation is ostensibly about the difficulty of meeting technical standards, but in reality, it involves more complex commercial calculations. Once mandatory installation is enforced, automakers are effectively required to assume the product liability risk of "false-positive engine shutdowns": the lawsuits and brand damage that could arise from a sober driver being locked out