US Congress Fails to Repeal 'Kill Switch' for Cars Mandate (newsweek.com) 98
Newsweek reports on how the U.S. Congress is debating "kill switch" technology for vehicles, "which would be able to monitor diver behavior, detect impairment such as intoxication and intervene..."
"While the technology is not yet a legal requirement in cars, Congress passed a law with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021 that requires the Department of Transportation to create the mandate." Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced an amendment to a federal spending bill that would reverse the mandating of the technology. On Thursday, 160 Republicans voted in favor, but the legislation failed 164-268, according to the House Clerk's official roll call — with 57 Republicans joining 211 Democrats in voting against it...
The House vote signals substantial Republican support for curbing any move toward mandated impaired-driving prevention systems, but not enough to pass such legislation. Critics of the kill switch technology see it as government overreach, while those in favor argue that it could prove to be lifesaving.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike for sharing the article.
"While the technology is not yet a legal requirement in cars, Congress passed a law with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021 that requires the Department of Transportation to create the mandate." Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced an amendment to a federal spending bill that would reverse the mandating of the technology. On Thursday, 160 Republicans voted in favor, but the legislation failed 164-268, according to the House Clerk's official roll call — with 57 Republicans joining 211 Democrats in voting against it...
The House vote signals substantial Republican support for curbing any move toward mandated impaired-driving prevention systems, but not enough to pass such legislation. Critics of the kill switch technology see it as government overreach, while those in favor argue that it could prove to be lifesaving.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike for sharing the article.
Get ready (Score:5, Insightful)
For them to mention something about illegal immigrants driving and this will get rubber stamped through.
Re:Get ready (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, all Dems voted against repealing this "kill switch" law i.e. for allowing law enforcement to disable people's cars. Maybe tell them that ICE will get the kill switch to disable the cars of illegal aliens, and watch all those 211 Dems flip their votes
It ultimately boils down to property rights, which are increasingly getting eroded in this country. Whether it's homes, computers, phones, TVs, cars or any asset one may own
Whoooaah, Nelly.
/3 of all highway fatalities in the United States each year;
(2) in 2019, there were 10,142 alcohol-impaired driving fatalities in the United States involving drivers with a blood alcohol concentration level of .08 or higher, and 68 percent of the crashes that resulted in those fatalities involved a driver with a blood alcohol concentration level of .15 or higher;
(3) the estimated economic cost for alcohol-impaired driving in 2010 was $44,000,000,000;
(4) according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology can prevent more than 9,400 alcohol-impaired driving fatalities annually; and
(5) to ensure the prevention of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities, advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology must be standard equipment in all new passenger motor vehicles.
(b) DEFINITIONS.—In this section:
(1) ADVANCED DRUNK AND IMPAIRED DRIVING PREVENTION TECHNOLOGY.—The term ‘‘advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology’’ means a system that—
(A) can—
(i) passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired; and
(ii) prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected;
(B) can—
(i) passively and accurately detect whether the blood alcohol concentration of a driver of a motor vehicle is equal to or greater than the blood alcohol concentration described in section 163(a) of title 23, United States Code; and
(ii) prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if a blood alcohol concentration above the legal limit is detected; or
(C) is a combination of systems described in subparagraphs (A) and (B).
(2) NEW.—The term ‘‘new’’, with respect to a passenger motor vehicle, means that the passenger motor vehicle—
(A) is a new vehicle (as defined in section 37.3 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulat
The Democrats voted against a spending bill that had the repeal tacked on as a rider. I don't know what was in the spending bill, but that's important context. If the bill was "Investing In Grinding Up All Pet Dogs To Put In Big Macs", I'd hope they'd be voting against it even if there were good things attached.
That said, the mandate bill Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021 was tabled and passed in a Democrat presidency, and contained a bunch of important spending for roads and transport. Both parties argued over it for a while and unfortunately I can't find which one injected that the vehicle-disabling wording.
But... what I did find was some debate that the time, which indicates that the mandate is regarding vehicles detecting a driver is drunk, then disabling it. Apparently remote disabling isn't what it mandates. The wording of the section is included at the end of my comment here. Now, I'm not saying I'm in favor of even that. But I have a hard time saying I'm against it. If the detection technology were flawless, I'd definitely be in favor. My only concern is reliability.
So it turns out the topic is complicated and has been made deliberately more so by the jackasses that keep tacking it onto the side of spending bills.
SEC. 24220. ADVANCED IMPAIRED DRIVING TECHNOLOGY. (a) FINDINGS.—Congress finds that— (1) alcohol-impaired driving fatalities represent approxi- mately 1
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Don't worry, someone will write some code that disables this function.
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Long before that, a hacker will write an app that invokes it, causing havoc on highways near you!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The way to prevent drunk driving is to punish drunk driving, not jam more buggy technology into vehicles that can be misused. Instead, so something like this: First offense of drunk driving is a mandatory misdemeanor conviction, $5,000 fine, a diversion program, and installation of an interlock device for a year. Second offense is a felony conviction, $10,000 fine, license suspension for 30 days (maybe a jail term), and 5 years of an interlock device. Third offense is a jail term and license suspension, ma
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I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Re:Get ready (Score:4, Informative)
In Washington drunk driving is an automatic 1 year suspension of license, misdemeanor conviction, and fine on **first offense**. We still have drunk drivers killing people, including ones who already lost their license. Just doesn't work any better than outlawing heroin has.
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In Washington drunk driving is an automatic 1 year suspension of license, misdemeanor conviction, and fine on **first offense**. We still have drunk drivers killing people, including ones who already lost their license. Just doesn't work any better than outlawing heroin has.
Add these devices to their cars, at their expense. Not make a universal expense.
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Know how to defeat an interlock device? Have your 5 year-old start the car, I've heard a guy boasting about it. Unfortunately I don't have a better suggestion except to require Level 5 auto-drive on all vehicles :-)
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Know how to defeat an interlock device? Have your 5 year-old start the car, I've heard a guy boasting about it. Unfortunately I don't have a better suggestion except to require Level 5 auto-drive on all vehicles :-)
I don't think these devices are starter interlocks. I think they monitor behavior while driving.
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IMO, making drunk driving illegal, would be a good start.
The US legal limit is so high that you can drive drunk, legally. Just not really, really, drunk. Telling people they can drink until their judgment is getting quite impaired, but then stop if they're going to drive, is not a great way to cultivate a "don't drink and drive" culture.
As a contrast, the US legal limit is _four times_ what is where I live. Here, driving at the US legal limit would mean a mandatory prison sentence, loss of license for a min
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Geez, what freakin' level do you want?
I mean, before the 70's for the most part many states has 0.15 BAC....and in the 70's and 80's it became more uniform at 0.1.
The late 80's and on....the lowered it again to 0.08...which is
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Geez, what freakin' level do you want?
The only one that makes sense: if you're going to drive, you don't drink. Period. Reaction times can be measurably slower as low as 0.02. Drinking alcohol and then driving is not some human right that it makes sense to legislate based on people that have high tolerance. It's extremely easy to keep track of "have had a drink/have not had a drink", whereas it makes no sense to have people ingest a substance known to reduce judgement, then asking them to judge whether they are impaired or not.
The only thing th
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If you serve it publicly....people will drive after consumption.
If the universe was 101% against drinking and driving then measures such as these would have long ago been banned, no?
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I'm not saying no to alcohol, or no to driving. I'm saying no to the combination of alcohol and driving.
This might surprise you, but it is possible to eat a meal without drinking alcohol. People do it all the time. It's also entirely possible to travel to and from a restaurant or a bar without operating a vehicle, if you do want to enjoy alcohol. It might be less convenient, but it sure as heck beats running someone over on the way home because you had just one drink too many to be able to brake in time.
Not
Only add the tech to cars of drunk drivers (Score:1)
The way to prevent drunk driving is to punish drunk driving, not jam more buggy technology into vehicles that can be misused.
Only add the tech to cars of drunk drivers. At their expense. No need for most people to have to pay for such devices when they buy a car.
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> The way to prevent drunk driving is to punish drunk driving
Are you aware that already happens? Drunk driving has been banned and treated as a criminal offense in most Western countries since the 1970s.
But it keeps happening.
I have mixed feelings about alcohol fumes disabling a car, unless someone already has a DUI and has this fitted to their car by court order. But it is obviously absolutely false that merely passing a law against drunk driving and imposing punishments for doing it, as you suggest, is
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> The way to prevent drunk driving is to punish drunk driving
Are you aware that already happens? Drunk driving has been banned and treated as a criminal offense in most Western countries since the 1970s.
But it keeps happening.
I have mixed feelings about alcohol fumes disabling a car, unless someone already has a DUI and has this fitted to their car by court order. But it is obviously absolutely false that merely passing a law against drunk driving and imposing punishments for doing it, as you suggest, is "the" solution that prevents it from happening. It certainly reduces it, but even before those laws I talked about, there were non-legal penalties for drunk driving, from loss of vehicle (wrapped around a lamppost) to death. And those weren't enough to dissuade large parts of the population from drunk driving.
If I had to hazard a guess, it might be because people's judgement is affected when they've drank too much? I mean, it seems logical, as that's the entire reason we want to ban them driving in the first place, right?
Spot-on.
Every year or so I hear local radio polls asking "do you think punishment for drunk-driving should be increased?" The next day it's always "yesterday's polls, of X respondents, 80-whatever percent said 'yes'."
They never say what the punishment currently is. Or what the raw numbers of drunk driving convictions are. Or if drunk driving convictions are increasing, decreasing, or steady-state.
At some point, anything shy of life imprisonment or the death sentence stops being effective at meaning
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Won't work. Some % of people maybe. More severe punishments doesn't fix any problem.
The war on drugs; that was totally won by increasingly severe punishments to the point the USA became the #1 prison state on earth. The same failed reasoning extends everywhere else despite progress on 1 drug.
The problem with impaired driving is that their thinking is also their brains don't function properly!
Re: Get ready (Score:2)
Take away the right to buy alcohol from people who get too many DUIs. If we can make Real ID nationwide then adding a way for bars and stores to refuse service should be easy.
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It's so cute you thought "property rights" were meant for you and me. The ruling class has always had a desire to own everything and return to feudalism or slavery. Capitalism is/was a modern way to amass wealth and property, while providing scraps and limited opportunity to "climb the ladder" for us plebs while the ruling class figures out the next government/religion/financial method to stay in control.
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It's a catch-22
Ideally, the kill switch exists, but the kill switch is not something that can be activated by LEO's, but only something that can be activated by the dealership. So they need to identify the vehicle, who owns it, and then ask the owner for permission to "kill it", and the dealership can hand over the frequency and password to LEO kill switch signal. No permission, no kill switch.
If someone reports their vehicle stolen, they can hand this information over so the dealership can disable the car
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You can just say it: The Democrats do some truly boneheaded stuff, too.
For what it's worth, this is one of those times where it might be a good idea to contact your representatives and tell them you'll forgive them for voting along with Republicans on this issue, because the broken clock happens to be right.
everything (Score:2)
Everything not forbidden is compulsory.
Now? Really? (Score:2)
Hard to believe in this environment of authoritarian overstep, Congress would advance a mandate that enables "law enforcement" to disable your car.
Re:Now? Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Because it was tied to this https://www.congress.gov/bill/... [congress.gov]
Re:huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a poison pill.
The No Kill Switches in Cars Act has been stalled in a Republican controlled committee for almost a year.
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Except that the party overwhelmingly opposed to this "authoritarianism" - the Dems - unanimously voted against repealing that mandate. The only 164 who voted for it were all from the GOP
I consider Dems that voted against repealing the kill switch legislation to be traitors to liberalism. Giving governments kill switches and the means to spy on our daily activities is NOT what I call liberal.
Then again, it seems that a lot of Dems in positions of power are only too eager to sell out to the highest bidder; witness Newsom saying whatever he thinks his current audience wants to hear, and the ongoing support of many Dems for the Palestinian genocide.
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Who cares what you call liberal?
"Then again, it seems that a lot of Dems in positions of power are only too eager to sell out to the highest bidder..."
True, like Republicans. Notice that you only offer criticism for one party when both parties can be criticized for the same things.
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Who cares what you call liberal?
Who cares what anybody here calls anything? Well, I do. You do too, or you wouldn't have replied to my comment.
"Then again, it seems that a lot of Dems in positions of power are only too eager to sell out to the highest bidder..."
True, like Republicans. Notice that you only offer criticism for one party when both parties can be criticized for the same things.
For me, the criticism of Republicans is implied, because in my estimation they have always been at least a little bit more likely to sell out for money and power and because it's pretty obvious that I'm not on their team. Also, I care more about the Democrats selling out because in a sense they're members of my 'tribe'. They're extended members to be sure, because I'm a Canadian and I'm well left o
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The Democratic Party hasn't been in any way 'liberal' since Clinton and McAuliffe sold the Party to Wall Street and the mega-corps in the '80s. Now they're just the party which wants to sell us out SLOWER than the Rethuglicans.
Re:Now? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stephen Miller just set up a guy to be murdered in the street by a masked paramilitary force, and now the entire administration is blatantly lying about what we can plainly see in a video.
I think you can remove the quotes from "authoritarianism".
Yes, the Democrats are far from perfect and this amendment isn't great, but JFC learn how to understand imperfect choices instead of continuing like it's sports and you just want to root for your team.
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He thinks it is a sport, MAGA only cares about winning, not policy.
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"The Republican philosophy might be summarized thus: To hell with principle; what matters is power, and that we have it, and that they do not."
-Pat Buchanan (Politician, Advisor for Nixon, Republican)
from "Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency" 2004
It's an old problem.
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Pam Bondi offered a deal to "consider" reducing ICE terrorists in the state if they handed over the voter rolls. https://www.newsweek.com/pam-b... [newsweek.com]
Personally, I'd keep giving them fake files.
Re:Now? Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Are you really so fucking ignorant that you're unfamiliar with the legislative rider game, or are you being intellectually dishonest to further the rhetorical goal of that game?
That vote had nothing to do with the rider. It was an infrastructural bill.
Rights (Score:2)
I don't drink (Score:2)
Drinking and driving is still an issue and reducing worth consideration.
So, find some way of punishing the people who drive impaired without operating under the assumption that every person behind the wheel is a potential drunkard. If your approach is "guilty until proven innocent", you're going about it backwards.
Personally, I'm fine with making the penalties really harsh, so those of us who don't partake don't have to have nanny hardware in our cars. There's really no excuse to not just get a taxi or Uber if you've had a few drinks.
Re: I don't drink (Score:2)
People are not just going to leave their car at random place overnight especially when it can be towed. The problem is people are forced to drive and there are no alternatives.
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> Congress would advance a mandate that enables "law enforcement" to disable your car.
From what I've read, this isn't a kill switch operated by humans at all, let alone law enforcement. It's some sort of alcohol detector device.
Still dubious, but not civil liberties dubious.
Government Joins In On Enshittification (Score:5, Interesting)
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It seems to be the way to go. It wouldn't surprise me if low-mileage early-2000s economy cars quickly escalate to the cost of new cars. (They're halfway there already from the auctions I've looked at.)
Not exactly the same thing, but I also bought a low-end ca. 2018 DSLR at the pawn shop recently. I should probably get another, maybe mid-range model to future-proof my ability to take and store my own photos. Because the camera manufacturers are no longer making anything sub-$1000.
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Just buy one. There is and will likely always be a market for 'classic' cars and they will be cheaper than the new ones that have all the modern tech innovations.
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My car built in 2021 has no connectivity. I know because when I disconnected the battery the time did not self set. The previous owner did not buy the navigation package either.
There’s also nothing stopping anyone from disconnecting the cell antenna on their car.
Re: Government Joins In On Enshittification (Score:2)
It is not about a remote kill switch, it is drunk driving detection.
The headline just calls it a kill switch, the article calls it "impaired-driving prevention systems", which is close to what the law calls it.
The requirement is for creating a policy that has passive alcohol estimation (breath, skin, whatever) and driving patterns typical of drunk driving.
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Sure... they're going to call it an "impaired driver prevention system" to get the technology approved. Of course, what it will really be used for is remotely disabling cars when their owners are more than 14 days behind on car payments.
There is over 1 1/2 Trillion dollars of car loan debt in this country now, and the auto makers know that there will be millions of additional repossessions the next time the economy takes a bad turn. Rather than pay repo men to clean up this mess, it's far easier to remotely
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Aftermarket remote kill switches already exist. If anything, the only people who have to worry about remote kill switches are the repo men, since they'll be out the work if it's easier/cheaper for the lender to electronically disable a customer's car until they pay up. There really is no situation where you don't pay, but get to keep driving the car.
The real issue with mandating this technology is that it's yet another point of failure/false positives.
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At this point, I doubt I will ever own a car beyond model year 2013.
Just inflation of new car prices alone has a lot of people feeling this way, too.
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I'm considering buying a used car now and I'm wondering if I should get two to keep an extra 2013 with relatively low mileage for when the first one craps out.
This is the way. Alternate driving them so they both get used. You can leave one in the shop for maintenance while you drive the other.
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If you're serious in your statements, let me offer some advice: A garage goes a long way to extending a car's life. Undercoating helps significantly if in an area that's not perfectly dry, and this needs to be reapplied periodically. Set aside the "that's not worth it" advice when it comes to repairs--you
monitor diver behavior (Score:2)
Monitor diver behavior? Maybe just have a lifeguard on duty for those hillbilly hot-tubs.
Massie gets it. It being false alarms. (Score:2)
My fingerprint reader on my phone works 90% of the time and my car's radar collision alarm goes off for no reason in normal traffic about twice a year.
Imagine if it caused my car and every other one on the road come to an uncontrolled stop for no reason twice a year.
Re: Massie gets it. It being false alarms. (Score:2)
This is a bad idea (Score:2)
bad, bad, really bad, double plus ungood
It will kill new car sales and make used cars very expensive
Hopefully hackers will find workarounds
It's not about safety, it's about more government control
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It's just fine, alarmist. It's basically a drunk driving block and not a remote kill switch.
Many cars have an actual remote kill switch already; for stolen cars and it's not done by the government. Soon we'll have cars that disable on payments, or failure to pay monthly etc.; all outside government.
You think it's 1984; but we've got corps selling tracking on people for decades already and the gov can get access to that if they want it. On top of that the DEA has access to all the plate readers and while yo
lots of things could prove to be lifesaving (Score:2)
"..while those in favor argue that it could prove to be lifesaving."
Banning cars "could prove to be lifesaving", why not that?
Universal healthcare "could prove to be lifesaving", why not that?
Cars exist for a reason, driving exists for a reason. Elon Musk has proven that technology to save lives is likely to do the opposite.
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Elon Musk has proven that technology to save lives is likely to do the opposite.
To be fair, Tesla's current iteration of self driving is at least safer than letting a drunk person drive.
It would help opponents if they didnâ(TM)t li (Score:2)
This is not a remote âoekill switchâ. Decision to disable the car is done internally and only when it is stopped. The argument against this is the odds of false positives and false negatives, try to remain in reality if you want to win.
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Ah, yes. "Not remote" in a car that more likely than not has a remote network access. Sure, the default will be "not remote", but do you really think they will not have that one ready?
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In a modern car adding a "remote kill" ability will be EXACTLY the same whether or not the car has this imparment-detection software. Again you are trying to steer this in nonsense directions which is counterproductive because it makes opponents look like idiots.
The problem with this is false positives and false negatives. That is it. Anything about some other way of turning off the car is total nonsense because this legislation does absolutely nothing to make that easier or harder, so please stop talking a
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(ii) doesn't say anything about being "passive" like (i) and (iii) does so it's safe to assume it's more than that.
Land of the free... (Score:2)
How is that going recently?
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Classic case of advertiser driven legislation (Score:2)
And the timing couldn't be better. States have too many cops and not enough crime because every year crime goes down but every year old farts think it goes up so they demand more funding.
This means the cops are starting to harass regular people who traditionally didn't have to f
Get a motorcycle (Score:2)
Oh look, more tech help murder women (Score:2)
This will 100% definitely not be used by abusive men to murder their wives that attempt to leave them.
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Government has remote-control (Score:2)
It's difficult to find a use-case for kill-switches, beyond the alcohol-detected/no-start devices already built. The only consistent argument for kill-switches has been government control of all vehicles.
This sounds like someone wanti
I'm totally okay with it. (Score:2)
As someone who drives by the book, never does any speeding, and generally doesn't break the law, I'm absolutely fine with this tech being deployed on the roads. There are so many drunk, drugged, racer boys or simply stupid people out there on the roads, that I would definitely feel safer knowing that they are stopped from driving.
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Will you still feel good when it fails in the middle of a snow storm and you're unable to drive your own car?
It's was a bad law when it was passed, and it's still bad today. It wasn't "use this proved technology", it's figure out something to do this, oh you have X years to get it in every vehicle.
There's still no reliable way for this to function correctly.
Did MAID bribe this through? (Score:2)
Problem? No, business model! (Score:2)