High-Tech Keys Could Stall Chronic Drunken Drivers

Instead of putting a key into the car’s ignition, how about using your drivers’ license instead?

Traffic safety officials are looking at electronic drivers’ licenses as they try to find new ways to put the brakes on chronic drunken drivers--those who can’t or won’t change their potentially deadly behavior.

Other prevention methods discussed at a recent conference include house arrest for those convicted of driving while intoxicated and devices in the car that require drivers to pass a breath test.

“While millions of people in this country react positively to society’s anti-drunk driving message, our roads are still jeopardized by chronic drunk drivers who refuse to get the message,” Terrance Schiavone, president of the National Commission Against Drunk Driving, said at the conference.

Drunken driving fatalities increased last year for the first time since 1986, according to the group Mothers Against Drunk Driving. About 41% of all fatal car accidents are alcohol-related.

The fourth annual meeting was jointly sponsored by the Century Council, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit group. It is funded by the liquor industry and dedicated to reducing drunken driving and underage drinking.

Robert Voas, senior scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluations, said electronic licenses are being developed in Sweden, where unlicensed driving is the country’s single biggest traffic safety problem.

The system would convert the license into the car’s ignition key. A device in the car, connected to a computer, would read the information programmed onto the license and, if it’s correct, start the engine.

Each license would be programmed to start specific vehicles.

The system also could help combat repeat episodes of drunken driving, Voas said, since a common penalty is to take away a drunken driver’s license. Without an electronic license, presumably they would be unable to drive.

But the technology is at least a decade away.