The European car police
These car police will be inside your car:
…[P]oliticians…want to limit your car’s engine power to make sure you don’t break the speed limit while robots determine whether you’re fit to drive in the first place. At least that’s the proposed plan in Europe starting in May, 2022.
Backed by Members of the European Parliament, the European Transport and Safety Council says its new mandatory systems “will reduce collisions by 30 percent and save 25,000 lives within 15 years of being introduced.” And so just days after Volvo announced it will introduce driver-facing cameras and limit all its cars to 112 mph, the EU followed up with its own Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) system. Which includes:
—GPS and/or traffic sign recognition to determine the speed limit of the road, with your car adjusting its engine power accordingly. Granted, the ETSC says that initially, the system will switch off once you floor the gas, mostly “to aid public acceptance at introduction.”
—Data loggers. When, where, how fast. And the data available to whom?
—Advanced autonomous emergency braking and lane keep assist.
—Reversing cameras.
—Camera-based driver fatigue detection.
—Alcohol interlock installation facilitation. A breathalyzer?
—Emergency stop signal.As EVO points out, pressing the pedal to floor won’t get rid of your new nannies. The ETSC says that “if the driver continues to drive above the speed limit for several seconds, the system should sound a warning for a few seconds and display a visual warning until the vehicle is operating at or below the speed limit again.” Beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep-beep!
Some of these features I have no problem with, such as camera-based driver fatigue detection (I believe that’s a beep that goes off if your car drifts unduly or if your head drops an unusual amount). Others seem more like the step-by-step injection of more and more control by an ever-escalating nanny state bent on curbing your freedom in order to protect you.
Now, I’ve never felt the need to drive at a speed beyond 112 mph or anywhere even remotely near that figure. But I am made very uneasy by a car that won’t let me because of legislation that degrees cars have systems such as the one described. And there is no reason to believe it will remain at the 112 level, or that more and more of these government-imposed won’t curbs be placed upon anything that smacks of liberty.
The bottom line for all of this is the question of how much risk we want to assume and who we want to be in control of that. I’ve learned over the years that people differ very much in the degree of their desire for liberty and the value they place on it. In general, Americans have long placed a higher value on liberty than Europeans do, but I fear that is changing.
So how long til California proposes this?
How long before someone figures out how to hack the system?
Well, I’ve driven well above 112 mph in a variety of sports cars designed to do so, and even had a Volvo sedan over 110 mph out in the desert. I confess to being uncomfortable driving over about 135 mph, though I was clocked at 140 once in a Jaguar XK150.
The increasing control by the state in the name of safety is profoundly troubling.
“save 25,000 lives within 15 years of being introduced.” So say the wizard regulators. That is a namby-pamby amount, equaling an average of one life “saved” every five days. It is an excuse for Statist control. Controlling vehicular mobility and free choice of travel is an urgent requirement of Statists like Merkel.
But I see their point. Every Euro life is more valuable every day, because no babies are born to the secular Euros, who oddly favor both abortion and mercy-killing.
Adolf would be proud.
Our “betters” make me think of the “intelligent people” who run the world in C.M Kornbluth’s marvelous story “The Marching Morons”.
You can read about it in this Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons
Our “betters” believe that we normal folk are the morons that must be controlled for the sake of . And their “final solution” is only slightly less extreme than “you should not have children”.
Western Europe continues to provide a plenitude of object lessons in stupidity.
All collectivist ideologies unavoidably evolve toward ever greater degrees of coercion. Until all thought, speech and behavior is ruled to be either forbidden or mandatory.
This is the other problem with the EU. It’s not a mere agreement, but an ongoing commitment to ever-tightening top-down control. For the good of all, naturally, but still…
What happens when the EU decrees that all Europeans must have an official EU telescreen installed in their homes by official EU technicians? For safety! For the economy!
Chocolate rations are up! We have always been at war with EastAsia.
There will be increasing limits to personal freedom — as well as increasing freedom for the rich and famous to break the law but not suffer.
Regulation is often the first step towards corruption, and America is steadily getting more corrupt.
I wasn’t aware of this until recently.
Here’s another example of how, in England, people in authority are trying to exert more and more control over everyone.
In England anybody who watches live TV is forced to pay a mandatory annual “license fee,” paid to the government, of which a large portion goes to support the BBC.
The BBC is apparently allowed—by law–to run detection vans around the country, to detect who has TVs in their homes.
Englishmen are also being harassed by the BBC’s TV police–as the English term them “goons”—subcontractors, men that the BBC has hired to try to intimidate–under color of law–their way into people’s homes, there to look for any TVs, and to ask all sorts of questions to determine if anyone has used their TV to watch any live programming; all this intimidation under the guise of a government sanctioned “implied consent” to allow these goons to enter people’s homes.
Not only sad but also infuriating in the home of English common law, where the philosophy and laws leading to the idea and sanctity of private property, and all the rights that attach to such private property—especially including “trespass,” were codified into law.
You know what would happen—at least I hope it would happen–if they tried this crap in this country, don’t you?
Snow on Pine: All true!
If you want to hear an English person bitch, the mandatory BBC license fee is a great ice breaker.
“The bottom line for all of this is the question of how much risk we want to assume and who we want to be in control of that. ” – Neo
How much risk we want to take is different for different values of “we” and that should be okay.
In most situations, I’ll take the risks I want, and you take the risks you want, and we each deal with the consequences is a workable proposition.
The behavior of drivers on the road impacts people other than themselves, however, and all civil societies have adopted regulations to help procure the safety of all drivers and passengers.
Many of these regulations are generally justifiable when the likely outcome of me taking a risk is potentially a detrimental, even deadly, consequence to you.
A lot of the others are just you deciding what risk I should be allowed to take, even if there is little or no impact on you, and talking the government into taking your side.
Huxley–Yeah, judging from all the videos on the Internet those Brits really, really hate those BBC goons.
Noticed, as well, the ID flip, where–if they deign to show their ID at all–the goons sometimes flip their ID holder open for a second or two and, then, put it back into the pocket; for all you can tell it could be a card testifying to the fact that they are a founding member of the Jimmy Savile fan club.
I especially love it when the goons turn around and hurriedly walk away when people start filming them.
I love the part about requiring onboard GPS, and many new cars already have continuous internet connection.
A San Jose, California assemblyman has already submitted legislation for taxing cars by the mile driven, so that they can make those rich electric car drivers pay their fair share. The presumed method would be GPS and internet connection. The legislator said that we Californians shouldn’t be worried about privacy issues, because when carrying a live iPhone you don’t have any privacy anyway.
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I recall watching an old video of couple guys driving a modified Porsche over 200 mph, about 320 kph, on the Autoban legally. Maybe all this new garbage will inspire a Gerexit movement.
Because all those drivers going over 112 are such a problem…
This is just more Eurocrat Big Brother carp. They just can’t help themselves, can they?
I love cars and I love to drive. Bought a BMW and drove it all over Germany on the Autobahn. Went 100+ whenever I could, but it’s stressful and exhausting. Things happen VERY fast. The first time I saw brake lights in the distance I was on top of them almost before they registered. Made me think! And going that fast cars would still come up behind me and flash their lights for me to move over. I wish everyone took driving as seriously as the Germans.
“How long before someone figures out how to hack the system?”
Already done. Search for “tuner cars”. Most modern cars (all?) include a computer/chip that controls a wide variety of operating features. There is ready availability of upgrade chips to boost horsepower, speed, etc. The Euro bureaucrats had best make it illegal to modify your car’s original equipment, even install a sensor that can report any fiddling to the authorities.
The other solution that will also save all those lives (25,000) is to remove human control over the operation of the vehicle, aka: autonomous vehicles.
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I’ve driven rental trucks with governors which limit their maximum speed. I hate driving them especially on two lane roads because it is hard to pass other cars safely. In my opinion governors are dangerous since they limit the driver’s ability to accelerate out of danger.
“Already done. Search for “tuner cars”. Most modern cars (all?) include a computer/chip that controls a wide variety of operating features. There is ready availability of upgrade chips to boost horsepower, speed, etc. The Euro bureaucrats had best make it illegal to modify your car’s original equipment, even install a sensor that can report any fiddling to the authorities.”
Hacking the system is a lot easier than modifying a Rochester Quadrajet. If any of you remember that.
But on the other hand if you can modify the quadrajet you can feed your motor with all the fuel and air it will ever need. Giving that you want to live til tomorrow. I say this as a man who wants a Pontiac 421 six pack.
Ok, it was a sixty two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwVOyzAI_mM
And your quadrajet can’t be hacked.
If what I have to work with is a Holley or Motorcraft, I can deal with it. Fuel injection is better. T om my older brothers.
https://www.flightjournal.com/the-wilder-wildcat/#outer-popup
Technology makes it simpler.
“Well, I’ve driven well above 112 mph in a variety of sports cars designed to do so, and even had a Volvo sedan over 110 mph out in the desert. I confess to being uncomfortable driving over about 135 mph, though I was clocked at 140 once in a Jaguar XK150.”
Cato, I hit 135 in my ’68 Dodge Charger. I knew it was a 440. You may well imagine the joy I felt when I cleaned the grease of the engine and read it was not a magnum. It was a 440S, not a 440M. A police pursuit special. It was rated at five ponies north of the magnum. But it just came with the NASCAR bottom end. And as we all know it’s the heads and intake that make the power. And, really, there’s nothing weak about the cast crank and rods in the magnum.
It scared the h3ll out of me. It wasn’t safe. That car had a lot more HP than it could handle.
These days I’m happy just tooling around in my Toyota Tacoma with the 2.7L four cylinder. Which was engineered by Toyota’s Asian commercial truck division. It will probably last me a million miles. which makes it the last vehicle I will ever need. Which means I won’t be buying the cluster**** the lefties are designing for me.
Soon they’ll force us all to take Mass Transit that takes you to where ever Big Brother Dictates not to where you want to go like to the Indoctrination center for your weekly Brain Washing so you will obey Big Brother this is 1984 and George Orwell