Big Brother Wants Control of Your Vehicle

0:00Irreverent news talk, opinion, satire. It's Newsweek Radio. I'm Jesse Edwards. Top trending story at Newsweek. House Republicans led a failed effort to block enforcement related to vehicle kill switch technology, which would be able to monitor driver behavior and detect impairments such as intoxication and intervene. Open the pod bay doors, Hal. I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. The House vote signals substantial Republican support for curbing any move toward mandated impaired driving prevention systems. Just not enough to pass legislation. Critics of kill switch technology see it as government overreach, while those in favor argue that it could prove to be life-saving.

0:42Ah, yes, doesn't that feel good? We're saving lives. I don't think a lot of us are really concerned about saving lives like this. Of course, we all want life to be generally safe. But there's a large quotient of our population that obsesses over safety so much to the point where it starts to become dangerous. And they are somehow incapable of catching that irony. I've got one of these stupid crash detectors on my F-150. Love my truck, but the tech is dumber than Trump. I'm a smart person. Because it always thinks that I'm about to hit this one particular truck in my neighborhood as I come around this one bend in the road every time.

1:17And it startles me half to death because a massive strip of flashing LED red lights goes off on my dashboard accompanied with this loud alarm. It's like, holy crap.

1:32I can't tell you how many times that dumb thing has startled me. To the point of almost jerking the wheel reactively and running into a parked car. There's nothing safe about dumb tech. And with these new kill switches that appear to be a new feature in cars of the future, I can imagine a scenario where I'm out driving in the middle of nowhere, I drop my phone on the floorboard so I go to reach for it, and the wheel turns an inch so I swerve over the line for a second, and then what, the truck is going to shut down because it thinks I'm drunk? Why not just install breathalyzers on every car while you're at it?

2:03Is this the end of innocent until proven guilty in the name of safety? Because that is sure as hell what it feels like to me. And I've got a spotless driving record. And our idiot representatives in government want to install another dumb gadget on my car to make sure I'm not drinking? No, thank you. It's just dumb enough to make me want to drink. No, it feels like they don't want us driving cars at all, eventually. I mean, at this rate, the average American's only going to be able to afford a golf cart anyway, right? It's probably too much of a liability when you think about letting today's average idiot get behind the wheel of a 4 ,000-pound moving chunk of metal at high rates of speed.

2:41I mean, now introduce the idea of day drinking, and I can start to see why Big Brother wants to put a kill switch in every vehicle eventually. While the technology is not yet a legal requirement in cars, Congress passed a law with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021 that requires the Department of Transportation to create the mandate. And hey, why stop at automobiles, Big Brother? Yeah, there's no end to this kind of insanity. Shall we go down the rabbit hole together here? Let's start by making refrigerators lock after 10 p.m. because your refrigerator's A.I. detected emotionally compromised snacking patterns and is a violation of your health care plan.

3:24The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now. How about toilets that automatically text your insurance company? I don't know if your cholesterol biomarkers trend upward for preventative intervention. People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once. AI-powered shower systems that limit water temperature after detecting elevated blood pressure to reduce a cardiac event risk. Smart couches that disable Netflix after three conservative hours of inactivity and suggest mandatory stretching exercises. Smart thermostats that override your temperature preferences.

4:05Because the algorithm determined your comfort setting is environmentally irresponsible. I think that's already a thing, isn't it? Now, if you're going to put these kill switches in our cars and trucks, why don't you just put them in the bathrooms of our houses? They can just detect alcohol consumption there from the toilet, and then they can lock you in your house. So that you can't leave it impaired. Makes just about as much sense to me as putting this crap in my truck. I don't want to live in that world, do you? Because that seems to be where it's all going. And it's always being done in the name of safety.

4:37As if any of us have a chance of getting out of here alive in the first place. And that's really the bigger question underneath all of this, isn't it? At what point does trying to eliminate every possible danger from human existence actually start eliminating the human part itself? Because life is dangerous. It always has been. Driving is incredibly dangerous. Love is dangerous. Alcohol is dangerous. Climbing mountains and skydiving is dangerous. Having loud, boisterous opinions is dangerous. And hell, being alive is basically a terminal condition. And now we're building a world where the algorithm slowly removes every sharp edge, one little safety feature at a time, until eventually you're no longer trusted to make any decisions for yourself at all.

5:25not because you committed a crime not because you hurt anybody but the machine decided that you might and one society accepts that premise and once we normalize punishment and restriction based on predictive behavior instead of actual behavior congratulations you no longer live in a free country you live in a padded cell with unlimited wifi that's it for today and until we can do it again it's Newsweek Radio I'm Jesse Edwards catch you next time bye And we say bye-bye. Newsweek Radio is a member of the Trust Project.