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Feb. 1, 2026 | Bonus Episode: MADD’s Stephanie Manning on impairment tech roadblocks

Feb. 1, 2026 | Bonus Episode: MADD’s Stephanie Manning on impairment tech roadblocks

Automotive News Daily Drive Feb 01, 2026 6 min
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About this episode

Stephanie Manning from Mothers Against Drunk Driving discusses the urgent need for impairment prevention technology in vehicles, likening it to the next seatbelt. She highlights two contrasting congressional bills aimed at this goal and emphasizes the importance of collaboration between victims, the auto industry, and lawmakers. Manning believes that implementing this technology could save over 10,000 lives annually. The conversation also touches on the challenges of regulatory clarity and the potential for voluntary standards in the automotive industry.

Topics: impairment prevention technology collaboration with auto industry congressional bills drunk driving statistics safety standards victims advocacy regulatory challenges
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News tech and innovation reporter, Molly Boygon, spoke with Stephanie Manning. She's chief government
affairs officer for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. They talked about two bills in Congress
that would take very different approaches to requiring impairment prevention technology
in vehicles. In the first part of this conversation from Wednesday's show, Manning explained why
MAD calls this technology the next seatbelt, how the insurance institute for highway safety's
announcement to include the tech in top safety pick by 2030 could change the game and why she
believes it will save more than 10,000 lives per year. If you missed that first part, you can go
back and check out Wednesday's episode. Here's the rest of Molly's conversation with Stephanie
Manning of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. After 18 years of discussions with several different
administrations, several different congresses, bipartisan support, victims and survivors are
ready to sit down in a really collaborative manner with the administration, with the auto
industry, with members of Congress and say, how can we work together to figure out what the path
looks like? Because any obstacle, we can figure out how to get past it and how to introduce this
technology to the public in a way that is good for everybody involved. I think everyone agrees
that drunk driving is a violent crime that should no longer occur on our roads. We're still at
historically high levels of death and injury. We haven't gotten back to pre-COVID levels. It's
really devastating to victims and survivors to continue to see the number of people killed and
injured every day. 34 people every day are killed in a drunk driving crash. Again, I think there's
a sense of urgency that mad victims and survivors feel around this issue that we just want everyone
else to feel. Feel that sense of urgency with us after 18 years of debate around this issue.
Sit down with us collaboratively, calmly. Let's figure out solutions and how we get over the
hurdles because they're all completely solvable. We know the auto industry has some of the best
and brightest, most brilliant engineers in the world. They have the solution. The auto industry
has the solution. There have been a lot of different suppliers working on various types
of anti-drunk driving technology for a very long time. I've personally seen four years in a row
of CES demonstrations of various types of tech. We're hearing from suppliers that
until the OEMs actually want to move forward and put the tech in vehicles and invest in some of
this technology, it's sort of at a standstill. I do think the Insurance Institute for Highway
Safety's announcement is going to change that and Euro NCAP is going to change that.
But at the same time, some of what we hear from every administration is,
well, we can't move forward with the rule until the technology is available on cars.
And what we hear from OEMs is, well, we can't move forward with the technology until we know what
the rule says. We've got to get out of this circular dependence and each administration
looking at the industry, the industry looking at the administration. It's time to collaborate and
figure out what's going to work for everybody involved. We're talking about our ability to
save more than 10,000 lives every year and prevent hundreds of thousands of injuries.
We really can't afford to wait any longer. Coming up, more from Automotive News, Tech
and Innovation reporter Molly Boygon's conversation with Mads Stephanie Manning.
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NADA. That's rey, rey.com slash NADA. On the automaker participation question,
it reminds me a little bit of automatic emergency braking where there was a
voluntary standard that the automakers initiated. There's been some back and forth about the
national standard, federal standard. Do you think there's any way basically that the automakers would
adopt a voluntary standard as they're waiting for more clarity about the federal standard?
I think that's always a possibility, but Mad fought very hard for very long to get that
rulemaking in place. Ultimately, what's going to save more than 10,000 lives a year according to
the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is this technology needs to be on every new vehicle
that rolls off the line. We're not going to move away from that as the largest victims assistance
organization in the country. That is the gold standard. I think any way we can start getting
technology on cars now is a good thing. That's why we were so excited about the Insurance
Institute's announcement at our 45th anniversary. We haven't had discussions about a voluntary
agreement with the auto industry. Again, we aren't going to move away from the mandate,
but we're open to sitting down and working collaboratively with all involved to just
see progress. Mad's Chief Government Affairs Officer Stephanie Manning, thanks so much for
joining us. Thanks very much. Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of Daily Drive. Come back
on Monday for a brand new full episode of the show.

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