'Your' Car Won't Be After
2015
By Eric Peters on 4.25.12
@ 6:07AM
Mandatory "Event Data
Recorders" will even know you're speeding in reverse.
After a certain point,
it's not paranoia.
The latest brick in the
wall is the predictably named "Moving Ahead For Progress in the 21st
Century Act," also known as Senate Bill 1813. (The relevant section is
31406.) This legislation -- already passed by the Senate and likely to be
passed by the House -- will impose a legal requirement that all new cars made
beginning with the 2015 models be fitted with so-called Event Data Recorders
(EDRs). These are the "black boxes" you may have read about that
store data about how you drive -- including whether you wear a seat belt and
how fast you drive -- ostensibly for purposes of post-accident investigation.
These EDRs are not new. GM
and other automakers have been installing them in new cars for years -- in GM's
case, since the late 1990s. What's new is the proposed federal mandate, which
would make it illegal to not have one -- or (in all likelihood) to remove or
disable one in a car required to have the device.
The question arises: why?
Several possibilities come
to mind:
First, the EDRs could be
-- and almost certainly will be -- tied into your vehicle's GPS. (Most new and
late model cars, conveniently, already have this, too.) Then data about your
driving can be transmitted -- as well as recorded. To whom? Your insurance
company, of course. Progressive Insurance already has such a system in place --
voluntary, for the moment.
When EDRs are mandated,
you will no longer have a choice.
We'll be told it's all for
the sake of (groan) "safety" -- just like the old 55 MPH highway
speed limit and every radar trap in the country. Of course, it's really for the
sake of revenue -- the government's and the insurance company's. Your rates
will be "adjusted" in real time, for every incident of
"speeding" or not buckling up. It'll be so much more efficient than
using cops to issue tickets. After all, so many fishes escape! With an EDR in
every car, no one will escape. Your "adjusted" premium will be
waiting for you when you get home.
You've got mail!
And naturally, they -- the
government, insurance companies -- will be able to track your every move,
noting (and recording) where you've been and when. This will create a
surveillance net beyond anything that ever existed previously. Some will not
sweat this: After all, if you've got nothing to hide, why worry? Except for the
fact that, courtesy of almost everything we do being either "illegal"
or at least "suspicious," we all have a great deal to hide. The
naivety of the Don't Worry, it's No Big Deal crowd is breathtaking.
But the last possibility
is probably the creepiest: EDRs tied into your car's GPS will give them -- the
government and/or corporations -- literal physical control over (hack)
"your" vehicle. This is not conspiracy theorizing. It is technological
fact. Current GM vehicles equipped with the same technology about to be
mandated for every vehicle can be disabled remotely. Just turned off. All the
OnStar operator has to do is send the appropriate command over the GPS to your
car's computer, which controls the engine. It is one of the features touted by
OnStar -- of course, as a "safety" feature.
In the future, it will be
used to limit your driving -- for the sake of "energy conservation"
or, perhaps, "the environment." It will be the perfect, er, vehicle,
for implementing U.N. Agenda 21 -- the plan to herd all of us formerly
free-range tax cattle into urban feedlots. So much easier to control us this
way. No more bailing out to the country or living off the grid - unless you get
there (and to your work) by walking.
The pieces are all coming
together.
First, computer-controlled
cars. Next, widespread adoption of GPS in cars. Then, EDRs tied into them.
Viola. "Your"
car is suddenly under the control of others. Just as "your" other
(cough, hack) property -- "your" home, for example -- is under the
control of others. It does not matter that you paid for it. Or even that you
have the legal fiction of ownership. You do not control "your"
property -- hence it is really the property of others. You are merely allowed
to use said property -- under certain conditions -- by the leave of the true
owners.
And once SB 1813 is passed
and signed into law, there will no longer be an opt-out. In fact, sure as the
rooster crows in the morning, you can bet the next step will a law requiring
older cars not originally fitted with the technology be fitted with it -- or
else decommissioned. It is inconceivable that they -- the government and its
insurance company cronies -- will allow anyone to drive a vehicle not subject
to this monitoring and control. They will insist it's not "safe" --
and of course, "unfair" that owners of older cars not equipped with
EDRs are able to "get away" with "speeding" and not wearing
their seat belts.
Our cars were once a
tangible expression of the freedom ideal. They are fast becoming mobile cages.
And the really devilish thing is they're making us pay the costs of our own
imprisonment, too.
About the Author
Eric Peters is an
automotive columnist and author of Automotive Atrocities: The Cars You Love to
Hate (Motor Books International) and a new book, Road Hogs.
Comments
Post a Comment