A provision in the 2021 "infrastructure" spending package, as it turns out, includes a provision that directs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to come up with a way to stop you from driving your car or truck if the government doesn't want you to. The measure is sold as a way to keep people from driving while impaired, but the implications are chilling.
A provision in the bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that President Joe Biden signed in 2021 directed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to come up with a rule by this year requiring new cars to have “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology.”
The law describes this tech as being able to “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle” and “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected.”
Critics immediately raised privacy, cost, and reliability concerns any such “monitoring” system would raise, only to be reassured by the mainstream press that this was much ado about nothing. The provision was meant only to keep drunk drivers off the road.
Because, you know, we should all feel so much better when the legacy media and the Democratic Party - but I repeat myself - "reassure" us that this won't be any big deal.
Here's the onion:
But the law doesn’t specifically forbid such systems from communicating with third parties or allowing them to shut down cars remotely. And you can bet that cops, government agencies, insurance companies, and who knows who else will all want access to it.
What’s more, in its “advanced notice of proposed rulemaking,” NHTSA makes clear that such a system won’t necessarily be limited to preventing drunk driving.
Note the weasel-wording there: "won't necessarily be limited to preventing drunk driving."
Think about this for a moment. This technology has the threat of doing much more than the proponents are advertising. There are a few layers to peel off here:
- Once the foot is in the door to use this to prevent drunk driving, it's open to prevent night-time driving, driving in peak traffic times, or any other reason or time that some unelected bureaucrat might want to disallow. This is a slippery slope we shouldn't want to be perched upon.
- While it's unclear how much this technology will cost, it's sure that it won't be cheap - and it will be added to the cost of every new vehicle.
- How accurate would this tech be, and how many resources would it take to monitor? At present, Americans take about 1.1 billion automobile trips per day. That comes out to about 11 billion miles per day traveled, 411 billion daily trips, and 4 trillion miles per year. How will any tech like this handle that kind of volume?
This is, like so many similar examples of government overreach, a colossal waste of time and money, and an unforgivable intrusion on the privacy of every American.
At some point in the next year, I'm planning on buying a Ford Super-Duty pickup, for boat-towing and camper-hauling duties in summer and plowing in winter. A diesel pickup, properly maintained, should last half a million miles, which means that this truck will easily last my lifetime; I'm 62 and foresee maybe 25 more years (more if I'm lucky) of active driving, boating, camping, and the like. I reckon it will be the last truck I ever buy. An old buddy of mine is already calling it, jokingly, my "death truck." But I sure as hell won't be buying any vehicle with any of this kind of tech in it.
It's not about impaired driving, and it's not about highway safety. It's about control. It's always about control.