Put A ‘Kill Switch’ On Gov’t Bureaucrats, Not Our Cars
https://issuesinsights.com/2024/02/15/put-a-kill-switch-on-govt-bureaucrats-not-our-cars/
Remember that “kill switch” mandate for new cars that media fact-checkers years ago assured the public was just a crazy right-wing conspiracy? Well, the federal government recently took the first step toward a rule that would …. require all new cars sold to come with a kill switch.
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.
The fact checkers also said that law enforcement and government agencies wouldn’t be notified of an impaired driver or ever be able to remotely disable your car.
Phew.
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.
“NHTSA is considering focusing primarily on alcohol impairment. But,” the agency says, “some options described in later sections provide the opportunity to resolve multiple states of impairment.”
In other words, once the government has its foot in this door, there will be no stopping what regulators will add to the list of “impairments” it wants to monitor – all justified because they will “save lives.”
This is to say nothing of the fact that forcing technology that no consumer wants into cars will raise the sticker price. Or the incredible hassles this system will almost certainly cause. Keep in mind that Americans make an average of 1.1 billion trips each day. Which means that once this tech is in every car, even a 99.9% accuracy rate would mean more than 1 million trips disrupted every day because the cars’ AI nanny thinks the drivers are “impaired.”
But, having been empowered by Congress (for which you can thank those Republican senators who voted for the infrastructure bill) can this mandate be stopped? Can the kill switch be killed? Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, introduced the No Kill Switches in Cars Act this year. Even if it passed the House, it would have no chance in a Democratic-controlled Senate or of getting signed by Biden.
Some conservative groups are organizing their grassroots to flood NHTSA comments opposing the rule, which can delay the final rule as the agency has to consider all comments submitted. One of those comment portals can be found here.
The problem is that, once in place, federal regulations are extremely difficult to remove.
In the grand scheme of things, this skirmish might seem insignificant. But this fight is worth taking on because it will take small victories, and lots of them, to win the war against the regulatory Leviathan.
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