The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says it is pulling out all of the stops to deter motorists from driving drunk this holiday season.

To support this message, NHTSA has launched its annual Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over campaign and has announced it is striving to end drunk driving on United States roads altogether through innovative technology called the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS).

“Each year, too many lives are lost to drunk driving, particularly around the holiday season. Now we have an opportunity to prevent future drunk driving tragedies by taking action today,” said U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “We want everyone to be safe this holiday season, which is why we’re urging the public to make the right choice, follow the law and drive sober.”

From now until January 1, advertisements for the Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over campaign will appear nationwide and law enforcement agencies across the country will be on patrol to protect the public from drunk drivers.

As part of the campaign, NHTSA has this year added a virtual experience called Last Call 360 that the public can experience using a mobile phone or computer. The experience creates a virtual bar scene through an interactive 360º video website that uses photospheres, cinemagraphs, videos, and gaming. Visitors are able to interact with virtual bar patrons, play games, watch videos, order virtual alcoholic drinks and discover the consequences of drinking and driving.

“Drunk driving crashes are no accident – they are 100 percent preventable. They all connect back to human choices and errors, but we’re not stopping there,” said NHTSA Administrator Dr. Mark Rosekind. “With the help of our safety partners we’re looking at a technological path forward to create a world where there is no more drunk driving.”

With 10,265 drunk driving deaths each year, Federal and Virginia state officials have announced $5.1 million in funding to help further develop and deploy DADSS, technology that could eliminate drunk driving. DADSS, a public-private partnership between the government and the world’s leading automakers, continues to develop safety technology to help passively detect a driver’s blood alcohol concentration (BAC) and prevent drivers from starting a vehicle if they are at or above the .08 legal BAC limit in all 50 states.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enN5qBSunOg&feature=youtu.be

Main image: Still taken from U.S. DOT NHTSA video: Woman in the Mirror