If you find yourself facing a charge of Driving Under the Influence (DUI) by the police, you need to do two things: cooperate fully with the law and immediately hire a certified DUI lawyer such as Phoenix Arizona’s Aaron Black or any number of qualified attorneys practicing in your geographical location.

However, while DUI will cost you thousands of dollars in legal fees, it’s quite possible that between new government auto safety regulation and high technology, DUIs could become a thing of the past as early as 2024. According to a recent report by Car and Driver, during a time when vehicles are being equipped with both passive and active safety technology to the point of autonomous or self-driving capabilities, some U.S. lawmakers are seeking to add one more piece of safety equipment to the list: Alcohol-detection tech.

An estimated 30 people are said to die in alcohol-related vehicular incidents in the U.S. every single day. That’s one every 48 minutes. This is the major impetus for the government to seek out a way to diminish the numbers of heavy casualties.

Senators from Florida and New Mexico have already put forth legislation as early as 2019 that would, in theory, require all vehicles to be equipped with unobtrusive and passive alcohol detection systems no later than January 1st of, 2024. The so-called RIDE or Reduce Impaired Driving for Everyone Act has been engineered to promote the research and development of high-tech alcohol detection equipment. It will also require the implementation of these systems in all makes and models of new vehicles on a standard basis.

A similar law is said to have been introduced in the House of Representatives. The overall goal of the proposed legislation is to outfit every vehicle with alcohol detection system that will prevent it from starting if the driver registers an alcohol intake over the legal 0.08 percent limit.

The current federally funded DADSS program, or Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety, is said to represent the gold standard in the realm of vehicle driver-intoxication systems. Rolled out as a prototype back in 2015, the program contains two components to detect alcohol levels in a driver’s body.

The first system is said to be much like a traditional breathalyzer law enforcement officials utilize to check a driver’s blood alcohol content (BAC). However, the device does not require a deep breath to be exhaled into it. The company that’s developing the equipment, SenseAir, is looking to engineer a product whereby the driver is simply required to breathe normally.

In the SenseAir product, the exhaled breath enters a sensor port. The port measures the amount of carbon dioxide molecules and alcohol present in the driver. Testing of numerous scenarios based on breathing patterns, alcohol intake, and even lung capacity is currently being tested.

Representatives of SenseAir state that one of their goals is to prevent a drunk passenger (as opposed to the vehicle’s operator) from tripping the sensor with an illegal BAC which would prevent a designated driver, for instance, from operating his or her vehicle.

The second system currently being tested is said to be a bit more complicated since it utilizes the vehicular operator’s finger to detect alcohol. It uses a spectroscopy to measure the BAC level in the body via the capillaries located under the driver’s skin.

Here’s how the finger test works: a special light is shined on the finger pad. The device then searches for a higher-than-normal level of alcohol which, in theory, should appear on two separate light wavelengths.

The overall goal of the finger device is that it be located on a surface only the vehicle’s operator will touch, such as the start and stop button. This is said to eliminate the need for a driver to place his index finger on a certain spot on the dash every time they get into the automobile.

One of the major reasons why this anti-drunk driving tech hasn’t already been put in place is that the technology hasn’t yet been perfected to the point where it’s considered precise and seamless. It needs to be reliable enough where manufacturers feel confident they can install it in every vehicle in their fleet.

Another reason why the anti-drunk driving tech is receiving some pushback is that some people view it as an infringement on their civil rights. But when it comes to vehicular deaths due to driving drunk, civil rights might end up taking a back seat.