Drug Recognition Expert Data System (DRE)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) mission is to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes, through education, research, safety standards, and enforcement. Pursuant to 23 U.S.C. Chapter 4, NHTSA is authorized to work with a wide variety of public and private partners to research and develop programs designed to increase traffic safety. One area of research is to improve ways to address impaired driving resulting from drug and alcohol use. Aligning NHTSA’s mission and to comply with 23 U.S.C. Chapter 4, NHTSA developed the Drug Recognition Experts (DRE) Data System (hereafter referred to as DRE System) to track current drug use trends and to identify emerging threats to highway safety such as spotting new drugs being used by our nation’s drivers. The analyses from the DRE System serves to evaluate the effectiveness of countermeasures intended to increase highway and traffic safety, including occupant protection, and alcohol-and-drug-impaired driving technologies and future initiatives. This Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) in accordance with the E-Government Act of 2002 because the DRE System maintains Personally Identifiable Information (PII) on members of the public.