“It is in my memory banks,” Eric Peters wrote last month, referencing an android on an old Star Trek episode, “the long-ago time when GM was a car company.”
Yes, in the “long-ago” they “made an almost infinite variety of vehicles to suit almost any need and budget, all of them designed and engineered to free their owners. Some were utilitarian. Others were beautiful. Some were arrogant. None were parenting. They were made by adults who respected other adults. What became of that GM?”
The answer? Government.
Specifically, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, as directed by Section 24220 of 2021’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
“By 2027, every new car sold in the United States could be required to actively monitor the person behind the wheel,” explained Shawn Henry, the Chief Security Officer at CrowdStrike until last year. “That means watching your eyes, tracking your behavior, and constantly evaluating whether you’re alert enough to drive. For a lot of drivers, that starts to feel less like safety and more like surveillance.”
The idea is for your car to remove you from control.
The excuse for this nanny-state totalitarianism — a human-made robot take-over! — is that it will save lives. If you are too tired, too excited, too sleepy, or just walking erratically, the idea is for your smart car to prevent you from taking the wheel.
But it would only save lives under normal conditions. In an emergency, your actions — watched over with loving grace by your ultra-smart car — could look like you’re on drugs or worse, and the car, not understanding the emergency, blocks your escape.
That is, if the NHTSA ever finalizes the regulation.
In a world where the CIA can execute you by making your car drive off the road (yes, it’s a thing), adding more overriding tech?
The wrong direction.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Grok Imagine
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