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from the vote-for-the-motion,-or-roko's-basilisk-will-run-you-over dept.
United States House Republicans expect to introduce bills later this week that would bar states from setting their own rules for self-driving cars and take other steps to remove obstacles to putting such vehicles on the road, a spokeswoman said.
The legislative action comes as major automakers are joining forces with auto suppliers and other groups to prod Congress into action.
Last month, a US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce subcommittee held a hearing on a Republican draft package of 14 bills that would allow US regulators to exempt up to 100,000 vehicles a year per manufacturer from federal motor vehicle safety rules that prevent the sale of self-driving vehicles without human controls.
[...] GM, Alphabet Inc., Tesla Inc., and others have been lobbying Congress to pre-empt rules under consideration in California and other states that could limit self-driving vehicle deployment.
As the number of self-driving cars on the road grows, will drivers proceeding on manual game the self-driving algorithms and lead to a ban on non-self-driving cars?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @01:39PM (4 children)
I myself am worried about the future. Any self driving car will log ALL your automotive travel down to the minute, and upload it to central corporate datebases over which you have no control. Your every movement will be tracked and recorded even more so than today. You will have far less autonomy over your own life. At least currently with a manual drive car, especially one without a cellular uplink, you can actually go where you want, when you want, and have at least less tracking, or perhaps, none. (This depends on license plate readers, cell phone tower logs, cameras, etc.) Since most newer cars have cellular data uplinks that send god knows what to their corporate masters, I tend to prefer cars manufactured during the 1990's -- that kind of technology was WAY too expensive back then for mass deployment, but I still get to keep electronic fuel injection.
Another note: With a manual drive car, I'm in control. With an autonomous car, the system controls me. I want to drive the car, not have the car drive me.
OnStar was caught not too long ago updating their terms of service to allow themselves to collect and sell your location data any time they wanted, even after your subscription was cancelled. This has been documented.
A Ford executive once stated during a presentation something along the lines of "We know when you're speeding." This statement was later recanted by Ford. This has also been documented. I don't believe their retraction for a second. Furthermore, while I do not have proof, I believe that pretty much every manufacturer is now monitoring driving behavior, and perhaps even the locations of their cars. I believe that all this data is being storing permanently.
I DESPISE the surveilence state. Most people seem to welcome it. Hey, "You have nothing to fear, if you have nothing to hide." Joeseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany.
So yes, count me in the camp of someone whom will hold onto their self driving cars as long as possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @01:46PM (1 child)
Yes, count me in the camp of those who will be holding onto our manual drive cars for as long as possible.
(Proofreading is important!) :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @02:02PM
The ironic part is in 30 years, he'll probably be correct. Self driving cars will likely go the way of the horseless carriage. "Car" will mean what we'd call a self driving vehicle, but a self driving vehicle will probably be one of those quaint cars you can control manually yourself.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 08 2017, @04:33PM (1 child)
Cars have to work in incompatible countries (cellular data-wise) and in mountain tunnels, and in the remote arctic, so even if there is a cellular uplink, the car should still work without it, so find it and disable it, or at least the identification module. At worst it's a little SM chip on a daughterboard.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @04:00AM
Original poster here.
I just looked up the Ford comment, and here's a link to an article:
http://www.businessinsider.com/ford-exec-gps-2014-1#ixzz2puo4Oq5f [businessinsider.com]
The executive was referring to their GPS systems, and thus it must have been an uplink, not just a stand alone black box.
I wasn't thinking about stand alone black boxes in particular when I wrote my comment. At least with those, someone has to manually, physically connect to them in person to get the info. The older the car, the less history they keep (as far as I know.) I also know that some of them are highly proprietary and require special equipment and cooperation from the manufacturer to access at all. (This is based on what little I have read on the subject.)
As for disconnecting the uplink, yeah I think that will work on some cars. But you may have a constant nag on the dashboard, a check engine light, and perhaps even a reduced display. An example of this would be the odometer being replaced with "CHECK ENGINE", or "UPLINK FAILURE", etc, that will not go away unless the uplink is fixed/enabled. Furthermore, the car could simply store all the spy data, and wait until it goes into service. At this time, it may be hard connected for diagnostics, and then it can upload everything.
Also, in the future, they could easily set the car to simply refuse to start if the uplink chip isn't working. (I haven't read anything about this happening right now though.)
Most people don't care about their devices spying on them, so the manufacturers have a big incentive to step it up. That data is worth money, money, money. Plus, a lot of the people making these decisions like control, regardless of the profits or losses. Surveillance is control.