Black boxes for vehicles

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING!

Maybe this is old news, but somehow I didn't see this one sneaking up in the rear-view mirror.

Black boxes for vehicles to be compulsory by next month

By next month, every driver in the U.S. will be required to have a black box in their vehicle. &hellp; in order to monitor driving habits and provide a snapshot of the final moment of impact if the car crashes.

The snapshot will be able to be viewed by law enforcement, insurance companies and automakers and the owner of the vehicle will not be able to turn it on or off.

Critics of the mandate see it as another Big Brother-style invasion of privacy by the government while others believe it is a way to keep tabs on drivers.

…A lot of cars already contain black boxes of course and General Motors have been installing them in almost all of its vehicles with airbags since the early 1990s.

GM's senior manager of field incidents Brian Everest told Wired: 'In the early nineties we could get diagnostic data, seatbelt use and crash severity.

'Currently, we can get crash severity, buckle status, precrash data related to how many events the vehicle may have been in and brake application.

'It’s about trying to understand what a particular system's performance did before a crash. In a great many cases, we can use data to understand whether it had any merit to it or not.'

The newest vehicles also can determine steering input and whether lane departure warning systems were turned on."…

By next month, every driver in the U.S. will be required to have a black box in their vehicle. &hellp; in order to monitor driving habits

Nice that "critics" got half a sentence.

It's one thing to have a crash monitor, but with just the addition of transmitters — and you know if they aren't there already they soon will be — any cop (or robocop automated traffic monitoring device) will be able to look inside your car and pull out everywhere you've been, every turn you took, whether you unbuckled your seat belt for a moment, and anything about your body that can be remotely monitored.

If laws were reasonable, this would be offensively invasive. Since cops have increasingly become "[you name it] warriors" instead of peace officers, traffic cops are increasingly required (and some delight) to be unforgiving, and citizens are increasingly seen as "revenue enhancement" sources, this is frightening tyranny.

Or is it just me? :)