âȘ Buried deep within the massive infrastructure legislation recently signed by President Joe Biden is a little-noticed âsafetyâ measure that will take effect in five years. Marketed to Congress as a benign tool to help prevent drunk driving, the measure will mandate that automobile manufacturers build into every car what amounts to a âvehicle kill switch.â
Remember the good olâ days of the Affordable Care Act? Remember when Nancy Pelosi said we had to pass the bill to learn what was in it? Yeah, that was great, wasnât it?
As has become standard for legislative mandates passed by Congress, this measure is disturbingly short on details. What we do know is that the âsafetyâ device must âpassively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.â
Everything about this mandatory measure should set off red flares.
First, use of the word âpassivelyâ suggests the system will always be on and constantly monitoring the vehicle. Secondly, the system must connect to the vehicleâs operational controls, so as to disable the vehicle either before driving or during, when impairment is detected. Thirdly, it will be an âopenâ system, or at least one with a backdoor, meaning authorized (or unauthorized) third-parties can remotely access the systemâs data at any time.
This is a privacy disaster in the making, and the fact that the provision made it through the Congress reveals â yet again â how little its members care about the privacy of their constituents.
The lack of ultimate control over oneâs vehicle presents numerous and extremely serious safety issues; issues that should have been obvious to Members of Congress before they voted on the measure.
The choice as to whether a vehicle can or cannot be driven â for vehicles built after 2026 â will rest in the hands of an algorithm over which the carâs owner or driver have neither knowledge nor control.
If that is not reason enough for concern, there are serious legal issues with this mandate. Other vehicle-related enforcement methods used by the Nanny State, such as traffic cameras and license plate readers, have long presented constitutional problems; notably with the 5th Amendmentâs right to not self-incriminate, and the 6th Amendmentâs right to face oneâs accuser.
The same constitutional issues abound with this new technology, but with the added confusion surrounding what Congress even means by âimpaired driving.â Does it mean legally drunk, or perhaps under the limit but still âimpairedâ to a degree? Would police be summoned automatically by the system in order to make that determination? These are questions that should have been addressed openly and thoroughly during the legislative process, not left to later, back-room negotiations between interested parties other than individual car buyers â manufacturers, regulators, insurance companies and law enforcement.
Ironically, or perhaps intentionally, there also is no detail in the legislation about who would have access to the data collected and stored by the system. Could it be used by police, and could they access this information without a warrant? What about insurance companies, eager to know with what frequency their customers drove after drinking alcohol, even if it was below the legal limit? Such a trove of data presents a lucrative prize to all manner of public and private entities (including hackers), none of which have our best interests at heart.
Ostensibly, the device, whatever it is, will passively monitor the driver for indications of impaired operation and turn the car off if it decides there is a problem. If that isnât enough overreach for you, get a load of this: The system can be accessed by third parties. That includes law enforcement, whatever government agency or company that thinks it has a right to monitor your activity, or your friendly neighborhood hacker who just wants to cause a little mayhem or extort you for as much cryptocurrency they can get you to cough up. Or a foreign power that decides it would be a good time to put the screws to American transportation. Given the success of the recent spam attack on the FBIâs email servers, Iâd say an average mid-sized compact doesnât stand  a chance. The government canât even keep itself safe from a cyberterrorism, let alone your car. For that matter, how many times have you had to repeat yourself because Siri gave you every answer except the one you were looking for? I turned it off for that reason alone. Well, that and the thing gives me the creeps.
So the system is designed to shut down your car if you are allegedly drunk, drugged, or drowsy. But will it decide you are impaired if you check both ways too many times before pulling into traffic? Possibly. Will it turn off the engine if you are in the middle a four-lane freeway and swerve to miss an impending wreck or vehicle debris? Maybe. What about a desolate country road where you try to avoid the corpse of a skunk? It might. Suppose you are stopped at a red light at the end of long day and close your eyes and lean back during rush hour? Will the system think you have passed out? Â Perhaps. Will the it suddenly decide it needs a restart or experience an error as you drive through a sketchy part of town? In that case I suppose you call your friends for a lift and if they canât come, you tell them to watch for you on the evening news. What about the criteria the system will use or how the algorithm will interpret your behavior? How often during a given trip will you be at risk for your car grinding to a halt allegedly for your own protection? How many times can you miss potholes before the system decides youâre drunk and itâs time to call a cab? And once it shuts down, how do you start the car again?
To add insult to difficulty, the kill switch is the automotive equivalent of the vid screens in 1984, which monitored the citizens of Oceania for signs of anti-party behavior or perceived indolence. Except Winston Smith knew that for at least part of the time he was not being spied on, although he did not know when. In the case of the kill switch, the system will be keeping tabs on you the entire time you are driving, which means you had better fastidiously mind your Pâs & Qâs on the road. You could end up waiting for a tow while your social credit score drops like a rock and your insurance premiums skyrocket.
How did something like this end up in the spending package? More than likely it has been festering on someone in Washingtonâs to-do list for years now. As a former beltway insider once told me, Democrats (and probably more than a few Republicans) keep their pet projects close at hand, just waiting for the opportunity to shoe-horn them into a bill. And keep in mind that the administration is probably not doing this because it needs to do it, but because it can. The powers that be, political and industrial, have school-girl crushes on China and a bad case of authority-envy, and this is yet another splendid way to remind us plebes just who is in charge.
As Barr points out, there isnât much information on any of that, which makes the potential problems with this issue Legion. (And yes, that is a reference to Mark 5:9.) I suppose weâll all know five years from now when the mandate kicks in. So hang on to your current ride for as long as you can. Or at least until you are ordered to buy an electric car or line up for public transportation.
Adding what amounts to a mandatory, backdoor government âkill switchâ to cars is not only a violation of our constitutional rights, but an affront to what is â or used to be â an essential element of our national character. Unless this regulatory mandate is not quickly removed or defanged by way of an appropriations rider preventing its implementation, the freedom of the open road that individual car ownership brought to the American Dream, will be another vague memory of an era no longer to be enjoyed by future generations. âȘ
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