Why Aren’t We Using Tech That Could Reduce Drunken Driving?

Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: WSJ Tech News Briefing
Episode: Why Aren’t We Using Tech That Could Reduce Drunken Driving?
Date: December 23, 2025
Host: Bell Lin, The Wall Street Journal

This episode examines why promising technologies aimed at drastically reducing deaths from drunken driving haven't yet become standard in new vehicles. WSJ’s Ryan Felton and Katy Dayton break down what solutions exist, how they work, the barriers to adoption, and what might drive (or hinder) their rollout, placing today's tech in context with previous automotive safety innovations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Overview of Drunken Driving Reduction Technologies

[06:53]

• Driver Monitoring Systems:

  • Currently utilized for ensuring drivers keep their eyes on the road, especially in cars with some automated features.
  • These systems can potentially be adapted to detect impairment beyond distraction, such as alcohol influence or medical emergencies.
  • "Oftentimes until now it's been used for, you know, ensuring you're looking ahead at the road. But other companies are starting to think about how they could adapt that technology to detect other forms of impairment, be it alcohol, a medical episode, that sort of thing." – Katy Dayton [07:16]
  • Considered a "lower hanging fruit" because it doesn’t require direct measurement of blood alcohol content (BAC).

• Breath-Based Detection Systems:

  • Advanced sensors attempt to calculate BAC from ambient air inside the car before starting the engine.
  • As soon as someone sits in the car, the system checks whether they're over the legal BAC limit.

2. How These Systems Would Work in Practice

[08:11]

• There are concerns about what happens when a system detects impairment:
  • Should the car simply not start?
  • Should it allow some functions (e.g., heating or cooling) but prevent driving?
• Some pilot systems allow the engine to turn on for comfort, but block the ability to drive until the driver tests below the legal BAC threshold.
  • "So that way at least you could stay in the car and if it's warm, put your AC on, or if it's cold, put your heat on. But you wouldn't be able to drive until your levels were at something deemed safe and within the bounds of the law." – Katy Dayton [08:55]

3. Barriers to Widespread Adoption

[09:12]

• False Positives:
  • Fear that even a 1% error rate would create millions of problematic scenarios, since car start events happen hundreds of millions of times daily across the U.S.
  • "One person who had worked on this tech said you can't even have like a 1% false positive rate because think about how many times someone turns on their car every single day. It could be three, four times against every car in the U.S. that's hundreds of millions turning on and off several times a day. One percent ends up being a ton of false positives." – Katy Dayton [09:53]
• Consumer Backlash:
  • Example cited of unpopular non-safety tech (auto start/stop) as precedent for user frustration with features they didn't ask for.
  • Automakers are wary of pushing a technology that drivers might widely reject.
• Regulatory Uncertainty:
  • Ongoing debate on whether and how to mandate these technologies, and what actions cars should take when impairment is suspected.

4. Potential & Historical Parallels

[10:29]

• Drunken driving deaths are a recognized crisis, with over 10,000 fatalities annually in the U.S.
• Past safety innovations—seat belts and airbags—faced consumer resistance and skepticism but proved life-saving. Early airbag designs even caused injuries, fueling controversy.
  • "There is this sort of like ingrained fear in the industry of consumers overall, just like rejecting these sorts of safety devices. It's probably going to happen in some fashion, but it's likelier. That's going to be some sort of cautious approach that gives people some outs in some way, but still trying to be effective..." – Katy Dayton [10:59]
• Industry is likely to take a cautious, iterative approach to rolling out BAC-detection and impairment-intervention systems.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “[Driver monitoring systems] might be like a lower hanging fruit to pick off because it doesn’t involve actually measuring blood alcohol content. It’s using current technology to look at how you’re driving at any given moment.”
  — Katy Dayton [07:30]

• “The common held belief is it should be up to that regulation to dictate what the outcome should be. There’s the fear that the car won’t start. And that’s been a prevailing theme in a lot of the pushback to this idea.”
  — Katy Dayton [08:36]

• “You can’t even have like a 1% false positive rate because think about how many times someone turns on their car every single day... One percent ends up being a ton of false positives.”
  — Katy Dayton [09:53]

• “Airbags in particular drew a lot of controversy when they were first mandated – they were so forceful that they caused very serious injuries and deaths. And seatbelts, a lot of people just weren’t using seatbelts for a long period of time."
  — Katy Dayton [11:05]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [06:27] – Bell Lin introduces the main topic: innovative, yet underutilized, anti-drunken-driving tech.
• [06:53] – Ryan Felton and Katy Dayton discuss current and emerging in-car impairment detection technologies.
• [08:11] – Discussion about what actually happens if impairment is detected.
• [09:12] – Exploration of why this tech isn’t yet widespread (user acceptance, false positives, regulations).
• [10:29] – Likelihood and precedent for rollout; industry outlook; lessons from seat belt and airbag histories.

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Conclusion

Though in-car technologies capable of detecting and preventing drunken driving are advancing, major challenges—particularly technical reliability, regulatory clarity, and consumer buy-in—must be resolved before they become widespread. The industry recalls the tough paths of past safety innovations and is proceeding cautiously, mindful both of the enormous potential to save lives and the risk of public backlash if the systems aren't flawless.

This episode draws the direct line between innovation and public health—but also between innovation and consumer trust, offering an insightful look into why the cars of today still don’t have all the life-saving tech that’s technically possible.

Transcript

[Varen Maria]

The next frontier in artificial intelligence isn't just better models, it's better infrastructure. Join McKinsey at the break to hear why tomorrow's AI winners aren't focused only on the next big algorithms, but also on what's powering them.

[Bell Lin]

Welcome to Tech News briefing. It's Tuesday, December 23rd. I'm Bell Lin for the Wall Street Journal. It seems tech founders are getting younger and younger. Some of them, in fact, are still in their teens. We dig into how some teenage entrepreneurs are well on their way to making it big. Then new technologies are emerging that seek to drastically reduce fatalities and accidents involving drunken drivers. Yet there are some key hurdles holding them back. But first, you might be familiar with tech founders in their 20s, but what about in their teens? It turns out there are plenty of young entrepreneurs out there these days who are still in high school or even younger. WSJ reporter Katie Bindley joins us now to tell us about some of the youngest new founders who are already pitching venture capitalists and gaining customers. Katie, you write about these young and hungry tech founders who increasingly happen to be teenagers. Tell us how they're building their companies.

[Katie Bindley]

So each of them has a different area of interest. AI is certainly a theme they all have in common. So I spoke with one 15 year old who has built a platform that basically produces financial reports about small and mid cap companies. So he's using AI models to generate these reports and then people might use it to just learn more about a company. And then another one, he got his start selling hard to find candy in Singapore to his classmates. And so that got him experience in learning about distribution chains and whatnot. And he ended up actually applying to Y Combinator and was accepted as a 16 year old. And his current startup is basically like a produce distribution company and they are using AI to basically forecast inventory for grocers. And then the company basically gets the produce directly from farmers. They have a warehouse and then they're delivering it to the grocers.

[Bell Lin]

I can't imagine that it's all smooth sailing though. Just like founders who are much older than them or just a little bit older than them face hurdles. What are some of the issues or challenges that these teenage founders face?

[Katie Bindley]

Well, one of them is still in high school, another one is in eighth grade. So they're juggling schoolwork while trying to build these companies and then they're certainly learning a lot. I spoke with a 14 year old from Sydney, Australia who this idea for a gamified education app, then he realized that it probably wouldn't scale and he'd mentioned the app had a good why he thought it was like a worthwhile endeavor from that perspective, but he didn't think it was actually going to be able to grow into something. And so now he's pivoted to a different idea.

[Bell Lin]

Now those sound like challenges that all founders face, so they're just encountering them earlier on. What are some examples of the successes that these teenage founders are having?

[Katie Bindley]

So Nick, who has the financial research platform, he has tens of thousands of monthly users. And then some of the companies that have had reports generated about them have ended up putting out press releases touting the strength of the analysis. So he's gotten some attention for that. And then one of them was already accepted into Y Combinator, which is a pretty big achievement and something a lot of founders would love to be a part of. And he was just 16 when he was accepted. And then Alby, the young man from C Sydney, he actually created a video. It was like a video application for Y Combinator and he posted it to X and it had millions of views. So he got a lot of attention on social media for his application.

[Bell Lin]

And I also wonder, you know, when you spoke with investors who think about when and how to invest in young people, that some of them expressed hesitancy in investing in teenage founders, what makes them stop short a little bit?

[Katie Bindley]

Yeah, this was actually one of the most interesting things, was chatting with the VCs about some of the things that sort of need to be kept in mind. One guy I spoke with talked about how high school is not going to be a great place to find co founders or employees and whatnot. And that traditionally college, even if young founders have dropped out of college, they've still been able to like build a network traditionally of people who are really smart, as smart as them, maybe smarter, who go on to work for them. And that's a lot of times where they've built their earliest teams. And then someone else just mentioned the whole really emotional component and maturity component. And he had met with three young founders and one of them was 17. And he started to think about, okay, if we're going to invest in this firm, I probably need to talk to the 17 year old's parents and have a conversation about is he emotionally prepared for some of the struggles that are going to be likely to come into his life as a result of pursuing this at such a young age.

[Bell Lin]

That was WSJ reporter Katie Bindley. What do you think about teens and startups and how young is too young to start a tech company. If you're a listener on Spotify, be sure to let us know in this episode's poll or leave us a comment. Coming up, There is tech out there that could help save lives by reducing drunken driving. We dig into how it works and why it's not yet widespread. That's after the break.

[Varen Maria]

As AI models grow, physical constraints are becoming a key limiting factor. Here's Varen Maria, senior partner at McKinsey, on what's creating the bottleneck.

[Veren Marja]

Model complexity is doubling every three and a half months and as a result of the compute power that's needed, the physical systems just can't keep up. Power, cooling, mineral supply and factory throughput are really holding up the ability to invest. A lot of our clients and companies are thinking about what strategies they can put in place for efficiency, workload scheduling and energy storage in order to meet the needs that they.

[Bell Lin]

There's no shortage of innovative technologies in the world that could help reduce drunken driving. Car makers and other public private entities have been working on them for years, but you're not likely to see them in new vehicles quite yet. WSJ reporter Ryan Felton joins our Katie Dayton to discuss what some of these technologies are and why they have yet to reach our cars.

[Ryan Felton]

Can you describe some of the newer in car systems and technologies that are being tested at the moment?

[Katy Dayton]

The two biggest ones are something that's currently being used is a driver monitoring system that nowadays is more commonly associated with automated driving technology that's equipped on some cars, particularly on highways, to control speed and steering. Some companies will put cameras in and other things to monitor your driving behavior. Oftentimes until now it's been used for, you know, ensuring you're looking ahead at the road. But other companies are starting to think about how they could adapt that technology to detect other forms of impairment, be it alcohol, a medical episode, that sort of thing. So that's one aspect and quite frankly might be like a lower hanging fruit to pick off because it doesn't involve actually measuring blood alcohol content. It's using current technology to look at how you're driving at any given moment. The one that's more advanced is a breath based system where it's basically as soon as you get in the car there's sensors and other things that are detecting the air inside once you sit down and attempting to calculate blood alcohol content to see if it's above illegal levels. That again has just been the trickier challenge.

[Ryan Felton]

And with both of those systems, do they literally shut down the car if they detect a driver might be drunk or is there any other kind of mechanism that might prevent them from driving?

[Katy Dayton]

Yeah, the part about the actual measuring of someone's blood alcohol content. Since that tech isn't in place yet, no one really has a thought yet as to what the outcome should be. So there's proposed regulations to require this technology. I think the common held belief is it should be up to that regulation to dictate what the outcome should be. There's the fear that the car won't start. And that's been a prevailing theme in a lot of the pushback to this idea. But one of the main organizations involved in developing this tech, they said their test vehicles will turn on and then look to see if you're drunk or not. So that way at least you could stay in the car and if it's warm, put your AC on, or if it's cold, put your heat on. But you wouldn't be able to drive until your levels were at something deemed safe and within the bounds of the law.

[Ryan Felton]

And up until now, I mean, this technology has sort of been discussed for a while. Why haven't we been seeing it employed in cars everywhere?

[Katy Dayton]

That's a question I ask a ton of people. Just because there's technologies that get put into cars that people aren't asking for. One example is what's called the on off button, where if you're driving, your car shuts off effectively. And at a red light, it's an emissions related thing. You would stop at a red light and it would click back on once you had the gas pedal. A lot of people hate that. And that's not a mandated technology. So there are examples of companies putting stuff in that people didn't necessarily ask for. In this case, the prevailing concern that I kept hearing was just the idea of a false positive is so concerning. One person who had worked on this tech said you can't even have like a 1% false positive rate because think about how many times someone turns on their car every single day. It could be three, four times against every car in the U.S. that's hundreds of millions turning on and off several times a day. One percent ends up being a ton of false positives.

[Ryan Felton]

And from all you've learned about this so far, and especially all of the criticism, how likely do you think it is that we'll see this technology widely adopted in the near future?

[Katy Dayton]

It's a known problem. There's over 10,000 people who die in alcohol related crashes every year and there's no one who disagrees that something needs to be done. It's just a question of how this technology is going to be dialed in to not produce so many negative consequences that people just end up asking for it to be disabled or, I don't know, sorts of scenarios where people are just like totally turned off by it. And I bring that up because in the past, seat belts and airbags were not widely accepted. Airbags in particular drew a lot of controversy when they were first mandated because they were so forceful that they caused very serious injuries and deaths. And seatbelts, a lot of people just weren't using seatbelts for a long period of time. So there is this sort of like ingrained fear in the industry of consumers overall, just like rejecting these sorts of safety devices. It's probably going to happen in some fashion, but it's likelier. That's going to be some sort of cautious approach that gives people some outs in some way, but still trying to be effective in clamping down on what's obviously a big problem.

[Bell Lin]

That was WSJ reporter Ryan Felton speaking with Katy Dayton. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. If you're a listener on Spotify, be sure to take this episode's poll or leave us a comment. Today's show was produced by Julie Chang, with supervising producer Katie Ferguson and Deputy Editor Chris Sinsley logging off. I'm Bell Lin for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back later this morning with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.

[Varen Maria]

The energy demands of AI are staggering and they're only growing. Here's Veren Marja of McKinsey again on what it will take to power the AI revolution.

[Veren Marja]

Our research shows that AI data center power could rise by 160% by 2030. And if you just put that within the US context, the US has increased grid capacity by 1 to 2% and the need to do that at a rate of 3 to 5% is what's going to be needed. And that is just an absolutely massive undertaking given we haven't done it in the last 20 years. Companies that will be successful will treat AI scale as both a technology challenge and a system level challenge. You're going to have to invest in efficiency across compute, thermal, networking and power. And CES is a fantastic forum where companies can get together and really try and solve some of these toughest challenges.

[Varen Maria]

Discover how McKinsey is redefining AI transformation at CES and driving innovation and impact across [e-mail] CES custom content from WSJ.

[Katy Dayton]

Is a unit of the Wall Street.

[Bell Lin]

Journal Advertising department The Wall Street Journal news organization was not involved in the creation of this content.