Connect with us
[bsa_pro_ad_space id=12]

Automotive

Vehicle monitoring software could soon use ‘kill switch’ under the guise of ‘safety’

Published

9 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Caryn Lipson

Ambiguity surrounds the definitions of ‘impairment’ and the consequent privacy implications of such technology, raising fears of government overreach and erosion of rights.

In the name of safety, the government has taken steps that critics say have denied citizens what used to be considered inalienable constitutional rights.

Citizens are concerned that their right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment is being denied, ostensibly, to keep citizens safe from “harmful misinformation,” and fear that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is being infringed upon to combat gun violence. Watchdogs further contend that citizens are being denied the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination and the Sixth Amendment’s right to face one’s accuser when technology is used to gather evidence.

READ: Vietnam’s new biometric ID cards raise fears of privacy violations, data breaches

The fear now is that increased use of technology will soon mean an even greater loss of privacy and further erosion of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, due to certain provisions in Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill which will soon become mandatory. Under the guise of keeping citizens safe by preventing drunk driving, it may amount to ceding the freedom to travel to government control.

H.R.3684 – Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act

The infrastructure bill, HR. 3684, passed by both chambers of Congress and signed by Biden on November 15, 2021, includes a provision for several vehicle monitoring technologies to be installed in cars, which have recently or will soon be required in new vehicles, including technology to determine if a driver is drunk or impaired.

The Center for Automotive Research’s Eric Paul Dennis reviewed the bill and summarized “key sections.” Dennis, a senior transportation systems analyst, reviewed the section on “Drunk and Impaired Driving Prevention Technology” (HR 3684 Section 24220) and explained that Congress gave the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) the role of determining exactly what this section means and how it will be implemented:

This provision directs NHTSA to issue a rule to require ‘advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology’ in new light vehicles.

  • Congress tasked NHTSA with interpreting this law, including establishing the statutory meaning of ‘impaired.’
  • The legislation directs NHTSA to adopt a new safety mandate by 15 November 2024 and begin enforcing it by September 2027 (at the latest) if this is feasible. [Emphases added.]

Impaired driving not defined

Others, such as Michael Satterfield, writing as The Gentleman Racer®, were more detailed in their review of the legislation. Satterfield poured through the 1,039-page infrastructure bill. He agreed that good roads, bridges, and safety are important to automotive enthusiasts, but wrote that he uncovered some concerning legislation “buried deep within HR.3684.” The legislation calls not only for changes in crash testing and advanced pedestrian crash standards but also for a “kill switch” to be standard for all new vehicles by 2026.

Satterfield explained that all new vehicles will be required to have passive monitoring systems for the driver’s behavior and an algorithm will determine if the driver is too impaired to operate the vehicle. If the algorithm decides that the driver is too impaired to operate the car, the program will have some means of taking control of the vehicle. But what constitutes impairment and what the program will actually do was not explained by the legislation, as Satterfield noted:

What is not outlined in the bill is what constitutes impairment, outside of the blood alcohol standard, how does the software determine the difference between being tired and being impaired? Passive blood alcohol testing won’t detect impairment from prescription painkillers or other narcotics.

The bill also doesn’t outline what happens when a vehicle detects a driver may be impaired other than that the system must ‘prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected’ which is all well and good in a bar’s parking lot. But what will this system do if an ‘impairment is detected’ while traveling at 75 mph on the highway? [Emphasis added.]

Accused by your own car’s surveillance system

He also expressed concern that most drivers will not be aware of the new technology until it affects them in some way:

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the legislation is the lack of detail. The main concerns expressed by many, including former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, come down to privacy. Who will have access to the data? How long will it be stored? Will this capability be exploitable by third-party or government agencies to shut down vehicles outside of the function of preventing impaired driving?

Privacy concerns and the 5th Amendment’s right to not self-incriminate, and the 6th Amendment’s right to face one’s accuser, have already been used to challenge data collection from license plate readers and redlight cameras. Automakers have little choice but to comply with new federal mandates and the majority of consumers will likely be unaware of this new technology until it impacts them in some way. [Emphasis added.]

Freedom or control?

John Stossel recently interviewed former vintage race car driver Lauren Fix about what she believes are the implications of the soon-to-be-implemented impaired driving technology, as reported on FrontPage Magazine.

READ: High-tech cars are secretly spying on drivers, resulting in insurance rejections: NYT report

Fix pointed out that the algorithm cannot determine what exactly is happening in the car and with the driver and asks Stossel how much control over his life he is willing to give up:

Are you willing to give up every bit of control of your life? Once you give that up, you have no more freedom. This computer decides you can’t drive your vehicle. Great. Unless someone’s having a heart attack and trying to get to the hospital.

California, Fix pointed out, already requires vehicle software to limit excess speed to 10 miles over the limit, legislation about which Frontline News reported.

Fix also revealed to Stossel that some companies already collect and sell driver data and proceeded to outline further abuses that could occur as a result of computer surveillance technology, such as charging for mileage or monitoring your “carbon footprint” and deciding that you maxed out on your monthly carbon credits so you can’t drive anymore until the following month. Or perhaps the car won’t start because the software determines you may be on your way to purchase a firearm.

What about hackers?

Can hackers access a vehicle’s software and take control of someone’s car? This possibility is another worrying aspect of the infrastructure bill, which Frontline News will discuss in an upcoming report.

Reprinted with permission from America’s Frontline News.

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

2025 Federal Election

Don’t let the Liberals fool you on electric cars

Published on

CAE Logo Dan McTeague

“The Liberals, hoodwinked by the ideological (and false) narrative that EVs are better for the environment, want to force you to replace the car or truck you love with one you can’t afford which doesn’t do what you need it to do.”

The Liberals’ carbon tax ploy is utterly shameless. For years they’ve been telling us that the Carbon Tax was a hallmark of Canadian patriotism, that it was the best way to save the planet, that it was really a “price on pollution,” which would ultimately benefit the little guy, in the form of a rebate in which Canadians would get back all the money they paid in, and more!

Meanwhile big, faceless Captain Planet villain corporations — who are out there wrecking the planet for the sheer fun of it! — will shoulder the whole burden.

But then, as people started to feel the hit to their wallets and polling on the topic fell off a cliff, the Liberals’ newly anointed leader — the  environmentalist fanatic Mark Carney — threw himself a Trumpian signing ceremony, at which he and the party (at least rhetorically) kicked the carbon tax to the curb and started patting themselves on the back for saving Canada from the foul beast. “Don’t ask where it came from,” they seem to be saying. “The point is, it’s gone.”

Of course, it’s not. The Consumer Carbon Tax has been zeroed out, at least for the moment, not repealed. Meanwhile, the Industrial Carbon Tax, on business and industry, is not only being left in place, it’s being talked up in exactly the same terms as the Consumer Tax was.

No matter that it will continue to go up at the same rate as the Consumer Tax would have, such that it will be indistinguishable from the Consumer Tax by 2030. And no matter that the burden of that tax will ultimately be passed down to working Canadians in the form of higher prices.

Of course, when that happens, Carney & Co will probably blame Donald Trump, rather than their own crooked tax regime.

Yes, it is shameless. But it also puts Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives in a bind. They’ve been proclaiming their intention to “Axe the Tax” for quite some time now. On the energy file, it was pretty much all you could get them to talk about. So much so that I was worried that upon entering government, they might just go after the low hanging fruit, repeal the Carbon Tax, and move on to other things, leaving the rest of the rotten Net-Zero superstructure in place.

But now, since the Liberals beat them to it (or claim they did,) the Conservatives are left grasping for a straightforward, signature policy which they can use to differentiate themselves from their opponents.

Poilievre’s recently announced intention to kill the Industrial Carbon Tax is welcome, especially at a time when Canadian business is under a tariff threat from both the U.S. and China. But that requires some explanation, and as the old political saying goes, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”

There is one policy change however, which comes to mind as a potential replacement. It’s bold, it would make the lives of Canadians materially better, and it’s so deeply interwoven with the “Green” grift of the environmentalist movement of which Mark Carney is so much a part that his party couldn’t possibly bring themselves to steal it.

Pierre Poilievre should pledge to repeal the Liberals’ Electric Vehicle mandate.

The EV mandate is bad policy. It forces Canadians to buy an expensive product — EVs cost more than Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles even when the federal government was subsidizing their purchase with a taxpayer-funded rebate of $5,000 per vehicle, but that program ran out of money in January and was discontinued. Without that rebate, EVs haven’t a prayer of competing with ICE vehicles.

EVs are particularly ill-suited for Canada. Their batteries are bad at holding a charge in the cold. Even in mild weather, EVs aren’t known for their reliability, a major downside in a country as spread out as ours. Maybe it’ll work out if you live in a big city, but what if you’re in the country? Heaven help you if your EV battery dies when you’re an hour away from everywhere.

Moreover, Canada doesn’t have the infrastructure to support a total replacement of gas-and-diesel driven vehicles with EVs. Our already-strained electrical grid just doesn’t have the capacity to support millions of EVs being plugged in every night. Natural Resources Canada estimates that we will need somewhere in the neighborhood of 450,000 public charging stations to support an entirely electric fleet. At the moment, we have roughly 30,000. That’s a pretty big gap to fill in ten years.

And that’s another fact which doesn’t get nearly as much attention as it should. The law mandates that every new vehicle sold in Canada must be electric by 2035. Maybe that sounded incredibly far in the future when it was passed, but now it’s only ten years away! That’s not a lot of time for these technological problems or cost issues to be resolved.

So the pitch from Poilievre here is simple.

“The Liberals, hoodwinked by the ideological (and false) narrative that EVs are better for the environment, want to force you to replace the car or truck you love with one you can’t afford which doesn’t do what you need it to do. If you vote Conservative, we will fix that, so you will be free to buy the vehicle that meets your needs, whether it’s battery or gas powered, because we trust you to make decisions for yourself. Mark Carney, on the other hand, does not. We won’t just Axe the Tax, we will End the EV Mandate!”

A decade (and counting) of Liberal misrule has saddled this country with a raft of onerous and expensive Net-Zero legislation I’d like to see the Conservative Party campaign against.

These include so-called “Clean Fuel” Regulations, Emissions Caps, their war on pipelines and Natural Gas terminals, not to mention Bill C-59, which bans businesses from touting the environmental benefits of their work if it doesn’t meet a government-approved standard.

But the EV mandate is bad for Canada, and terrible for Canadians. A pledge to repeal it would be an excellent start.

Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.

Continue Reading

Automotive

Trump Must Act to Halt the Tesla Terror Campaign

Published on

Christopher F. Rufo

The Left’s splintering violence threatens a veto over democratic power.

Elon Musk finds himself at the fulcrum of American life. His companies are leading the field across the automotive, space, robotics, and AI industries. His ownership of the social platform X gives him significant influence over political discourse. And his DOGE initiative represents the single greatest threat to the permanent administrative state. Musk is arguably the most powerful man in the United States, including President Trump.

The Left has taken notice. Left-wing activists have long practiced a tactic called “power mapping,” which entails diagramming the opposing political movement and identifying “chokepoints.” They have designated Musk as one such chokepoint. This month, activists claimed to have organized 500 protests against Elon Musk’s Tesla—dubbed the “Tesla Takedown”—with demonstrations outside sales lots and a series of incidents of vandalism, property destruction, and fire bombings. A pattern has also emerged of individuals scratching or spray-painting parked Teslas, looking to intimidate owners and potential owners or just to express hatred of Musk.

Precedents exist for this kind of escalation. In the 1970s, following the frustrations of the civil rights era, left-wing splinter groups launched targeted terror campaigns and symbolic acts of violence. They bombed the U.S. Capitol, assassinated police officers, and even self-immolated in imitation of Buddhist monks. We may be entering a similar phase today, as the collapse of the Black Lives Matter movement gives rise to radicalized left-wing factions willing to embrace violence. If so, Musk’s Tesla may be the Number One target.

What, exactly, motivates this campaign? At its core, the Left appears to be shifting from an “antiracist” narrative to an anti-wealth one—from a racial frame to an economic one. The sentiment driving the Tesla Takedown is rooted in economic resentment and a desire for leveling. Musk has become a symbol of everything progressives oppose: oligarchy, capitalism, wealth, and innovation. These, in their view, are marks of the oppressor. They scorn the futuristic Cybertruck, SpaceX rockets, and Optimus robots, believing that such creations should be dismantled and repurposed into chassis for public buses or I-beams for public housing.

A certain element of left-wing Luddism is at work here, but the greater part of these activists’ motives is resentment. Musk represents the triumph of the great man of industry, something the Left believes should not exist.

Unfortunately, the Tesla Takedown may succeed. The Left has likely identified Tesla as a chokepoint because it’s easier to dissuade consumers from buying a car they associate with a malevolent political cause—or fear might be vandalized—than it is to persuade them to buy one in support of Musk and DOGE. When it comes to purchasing a Tesla, fear among the average American is a more powerful motivator than enthusiasm among the MAGA base.

Some evidence suggests that the campaign has made an economic impact. Tesla stock peaked around the time of President Trump’s inauguration and since then has lost approximately 40 percent of its value. Musk has accumulated more power than any other American, but that means that he has more points of vulnerability. His wealth and power are tied to his companies—most importantly, his consumer car company, which depends on individual purchases rather than institutional contracts (like SpaceX).

Trump has signaled that he understands this dilemma. He appeared at the White House in a Tesla and has voiced support for Musk’s firms. Justice Department prosecutors—and their allies in state government—must translate this support into policy by identifying and punishing those who destroy property as a means of political intimidation.

The administration needs to make clear that radical left-wing factions cannot use violence to wield a veto over democratic governance. If the partnership between Trump and Musk is to produce meaningful results, it must be backed by the full protection of the law.

Continue Reading

Trending

X