Friday, February 16, 2024

The Pitfalls of Government-Mandated Car Kill Switches

Food for thought! Big Government! A very slippery slope!

How accurate are the sensors? What if a passenger, but not the driver is drunk? And so on ...

Benjamin Franklin:
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

"Should your car decide whether you’re able to drive?

That’s not some hypothetical question. In the 2,700-plus pages of the 2021 infrastructure law ... a provision placed a surprising requirement on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The agency was tasked with developing a regulation that “requires passenger motor vehicles, manufactured after the effective date of that standard, to be equipped with advanced drunk- and impaired-driving prevention technology,” according to the agency’s website. ...
As Rep. Thomas Massie put it during a December hearing, “The false positives would far outweigh the advantages.” ...
Even the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s acting administrator at the time, Ann Carlson, acknowledged the issues with flawed technology, telling Reuters that given the roughly 1 billion car trips in a day in the U.S., “If it’s 99.9% accurate, you could have a million false positives.” ...
How much would it cost auto manufacturers to add such technology to all new vehicles sold?
Cars are already exorbitantly expensive. In April 2013, the average new car was around $31,000, per Kelley Blue Book. Now, it’s nearly $49,000.  ...
Furthermore, if we allow cars to not run to prevent impaired driving, is this a slippery slope? Will speeding and other signs of more aggressive driving—such as braking hard and changing lanes often—also be deemed qualities that should shut down a car? How far are we willing to go for safety? ..."

Kill Switch: Feds Eye Letting Cars Choose if You Can Drive

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