The Senate recently passed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that will allocate $11 billion for transportation safety. One part of that relates to new technology added to vehicles to help prevent drunk driving deaths.

“The DADSS technology is novel technology, completely different than the conventional breathalyzer everyone is familiar with,” said Robert Strassburger, president and CEO of the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety.

The Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety, or DADSS for short, is a different type of detection system than what you might be used to seeing.

“This technology is intended to be working in the background, installed in the vehicle at the time the vehicle is made,” Strassburger said.

He oversees the development of this tech.

“By breathing naturally or by touching the steering wheel or the starter button, the system would measure your blood alcohol concentration,” he said.

If your BAC, or blood alcohol concentration, was over a certain threshold, the car would respond in a number of possible ways: either give a warning, not start, or not change gears.

“This is very high-risk research,” he said.

And after 20 years of helping develop this technology, Strassburger said more work and research still needs to be done.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that about 28 people in the U.S. die each day in drunk driving crashes. In 2019, more than 10,142 people lost their lives.

“Prior to moving the vehicle, I can see that saving a lot of our young kids, or those one-time offenders,” Dr. Tricia Hudson-Matthew, associate professor at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, said on the different technologies being developed for drunk driving prevention.

Dr. Hudson-Matthew is a substance abuse expert and sees how technologies that can monitor a number of factors, from speed to lane changing to slurred speech, can help.

“They’re looking at the ways of picking up, detecting behavioral patterns in the car, which will be interesting,” she said.

This new technology could be in every car manufactured in just a few years. The Senate recently passed a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill that includes language on automobile safety. The bill will go to the House next.

“It’s multisectoral, and by that I mean it deals with a number of infrastructure sectors at once in a sort of holistic way. That is in contrast to what Congress normally does,” said Rick Geddes, founding director at the Cornell University Program in Infrastructure Policy. “What we have is a mandate from the Senate for the National Highway and Safety Administration to develop the technology. And to look at the technologies that are out there and develop a standard within three years so that new cars would have to have some standard, which is to be determined.”

Economist Alan Gin said something like this does come at a cost.

“It’s been estimated this infrastructure package is going to add about $250 billion to the federal debt over a 10 year period,” said Gin, an economics professor at the University of San Diego.

So who will pay for this new technology in every car? Strassburger said while they don’t have an exact cost just yet, it will probably be up to the manufacturers what cost is implemented on consumers, if any.

“It will be their decision what to charge, how to charge it,” he said.

DADSS continues to develop the tech to quantify the amount of alcohol in a driver’s blood.

“Our quantification will be linkable to the gold standard, which is a hospital blood draw,” Strassburger said. “Our job ultimately is to produce the best, most accurate, most reliable, best-performing sensor as possible.”

And after decades of research, Strassburger is seeing the results.

“What is really rewarding is after being involved in this program for so long, I can see the finish line. I can see we’re going to finish and that is really great,” he said.

CINCINNATI —

A police oversight group got the funding it was fighting for during city budget debates last month.

The Citizen Complaint Authority, which has had a backlog of more than 100 cases over the last year, pleaded with the city for funding to hire additional investigators to help clear the backlog, and city leaders listened.

"The Citizen Complaint Authority has for years been underfunded and this council and mayor decided to put their money where their mouth is," said Mark "Zeek" Childers, chair of the Citizen Complaint Authority.

The group was established in 2003 under the Collaborative Agreement. Staff members investigate allegations of police misconduct and the board votes on the investigators' findings.

"It's very discouraging when you look at cases and they're dated 18 months ago," Childers said. "We're supposed to have a 90-day turnaround."

Monday night, the board voted on five findings. The oldest dated back to July 2019 and most recent was from April 2021.

In most of the cases, the officers were cleared of wrongdoing.

On two accounts, the board sided with complainants that officers violated procedure by failing to turn on their body cameras during interactions with citizens.

The board also agreed with an allegation an officer used excessive force while breaking up a fight in March of 2020.

"We would just like, on the record, to indicate that we don't agree with the finding on that issue," said FOP Attorney Steve Lazarus.

During the meeting, Jason Cooper with Criminal Justice Initiatives, which is run out of the city manager's office, updated the board on efforts to track recommendations.

Cooper said the group is now meeting monthly to review, track and discuss CCA recommendations and the police department's response to them.

"These are four areas of progress that are coming out in these discussions across the departments," Cooper said after detailing changes to procedure following CCA recommendations relating to body-worn cameras, written reprimands and use of force.

"I think this is great news for CCA," said CCA Executive Director Gabe Davis. "I think this shows that we're being effective here. I think it shows we're being constructive, and I think it shows that there's good dialogue about moving forward on issues that are of common concern."

"It can only strengthen the relationship that the police have with the community," Childers said.

Scot Grossman and his team are finishing touches on this brand new, nearly two-mile stretch of trail that curves along Clear Creek Canyon in Colorado.

“It’s 65 miles, 5,600 vertical feet, going through multiple jurisdictions along the way. The biggest link to that 65 miles is Clear Creek Canyon, which we’re in right now,” Scot Grossman, the projects team supervisor at Jefferson County Open Space, said.

By the end of August, this part of the trail will be open for walking and biking.

“We finished about three miles in 2017; this is a mile and three quarters right now. We have funding for another three and a half miles, which will leave roughly a five-mile gap, and that's really where that federal money comes in,” Grossman said.

He has watched as segments of this 16.5-mile missing link on the Peaks to Plains trail project have come to life -- funded by state money, federal transportation dollars, and other grants.

“Big public projects like this, big capital projects, take money from all over. It can’t just be the local jurisdiction taking on something of statewide significance like this,” he said.

That’s where federal funding can play a role and where President Joe Biden’s proposed infrastructure plan might fill a gap.

“The federal jobs act is a huge one for us to be able to leverage the funding we do have, which is significant but not enough to finish something like this,” Grossman said.

And projects like this exist around the country.

“I bet all of you can think of a place in your neighborhood where you're like, ‘Oh, I can make that two-mile trip on my bike, except I have to cross that one road that feels very dangerous.’ Putting this kind of investment into biking and walking will help find a solution to things like that,” Caron Whitaker, Deputy Executive Director of the League of American Bicyclists, said.

Whitaker says the larger infrastructure package being discussed could help shift gears in how we travel.

“There's a lot of projects that are on the backlog that cities and towns and even states have wanted to do for a long time but just haven’t had the funding. So the infrastructure package would give them that funding,” Whitaker said.

The issue right now is that no one in the federal government has agreed on what should be in the plan that gets implemented.

“So there are competing bills in the Senate and the House, and there’s going to have to be some negotiation, and the bills look very different,” Nick Klein, an assistant professor at Cornell University in the department of city and regional planning, said.

Klein said it’s not clear whether this bill will be what we normally see for transportation policy or if it will be something different.

“In public opinion surveys, the American public wants to see a future with more walking, cycling, and transit. By and large, that’s what people want us to focus on,” Klein said.

“The infrastructure bill is very important because it sort of sets the agenda for where and how we’re going to spend billions and billions of dollars,” he said.

Back at the Peaks to Plains project, Piep van Heuven with nonprofit advocacy group Bicycle Colorado said projects like this couldn't be done without federal funding.

“We don't have a lot of detail yet on the infrastructure plan, but there are three very good indicators; one is that the funding of bicycling and walking is likely to increase, possibly double,” she explained. “And [the plan] also uses language like ‘fix it right,' which is a nod to Complete Streets or the philosophy that when you build a road or maintain a road, you want to do so for everybody. So that’s for people driving and biking and walking.”

Construction on this trail continues -- paving the way for what other user-friendly trails could look like moving forward.

“Having those federal dollars in focus to be able to complete things like this is enormous,” Grossman said.

“This is a great example of exactly the kind of bike and pedestrian multi-use path that we want. It’s the creme de la creme,” Van Heuven said.

CINCINNATI — The city budget is finally balanced, but it took $67 million of American Rescue Plan funding to make it happen. On Thursday, at the first public hearing for Cincinnati’s 2022 budget, groups made their case to receive a portion of what’s left.

But members of council are still uncertain about the city’s financial future. Decisions made in Columbus could radically change Cincinnati’s plans.

The issue: "There is significant uncertainty in the short term regarding the extent of income taxes,” said assistant city manager Chris Bingham.

Earnings tax, which funds a majority of Cincinnati’s city budget, can usually only be collected from people working within city limits.

During the pandemic, Gov. Mike DeWine signed an order allowing Ohio cities to collect the tax from people working remotely for local companies while living elsewhere.

RELATED: Remote workers want to stop paying city income taxes

That measure isn’t permanent, however. And if people don’t return to working in-person, inside city limits, the tax revenue they generated for local government will be lost.

Worst of all, from a local government’s point of view: The Ohio House and Senate are considering bills that would require cities to refund the remote workers who paid earnings tax during the pandemic.

“It would be absolutely devastating for a city like Cincinnati that is so dependent on the earnings tax,” said Councilmember David Mann, who chairs City Council’s budget and finance committee.

But Cincinnati would also have time to plan. Mann said he and his colleagues are ready to use American Rescue Plan money to fill the tax gap this year and next if necessary.

“It’s not like the money disappears the next day” if a new bill is passed, Mann said. “One of the things we did when we made estimates about how to use the stimulus money was to increase our contingency because of those issues.”

The city budget must be finalized and approved by the end of June.