Oct
13
Big Brother Will Now Ride Shot Gun
Filed Under State Government, News
Under the guise of “preventing dangerous car chases”, GM is now planning to add remote stopping capabilities to 1.6 million 2009 vehicles. The idea (which the police are apparently very excited about) is that when a car is stolen, the owner will report it, and then when a police officer spots the vehicle, they can contact OnStar to have the vehicle brought to a stop. The driver (in this case a presumed felon) will only lose the ability to accelerate, and all other functions of the car will continue to work. (Read on for why I think it’s a bad idea and get a video link of the technology in action.)
While in theory it sounds good, I can foresee several problems with this:
1) Pranks - how many cars will be falsely reported stolen and stopped?
2) What safeguards are in place to make sure that OnStar representatives are properly trained?
3) What happens the first time someone is driving a pregnant woman to the hospital and a police officer has a car stopped remotely because the car is being driven too fast?
4) How long until the slippery slope outlined in step three becomes the de facto use for this technology? Do you think cops are going to be content only use this to prevent car chases?
5) How long before car thieves find a way to disable the signal, thereby making it so that only law-abiding citizens have the potential for having their cars stopped remotely?
6) What testing has been done to ensure that this will work 100% of the time? What if it fails? I predict this will only last until the first “presumed felon” who finds the car accelerating out of control or who also loses steering sues the pants off GM.
You can see a video of the technology in action on YouTube.
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.