What I’m reading is that every car will have to be equipped with functioning GPS that’s going to check against a database of speed limits.
—Speed limits that can change and be out of date. —GPS data that could be stored and extracted from the dealership and sold or given to the government, insurance companies, and law enforcement. —GPS data that could be sent in real time if the car has a cellular connection or hijacks the cellular connection in your phone when you connect it to the car.
This is bad. Really really bad.
…GPS data that
couldwill be stored and extracted…GPS data that
couldwill be sent in real timeFTFY!
I agree with your first point, but the latter two:
—GPS data that could be stored and extracted from the dealership and sold or given to the government, insurance companies, and law enforcement. —GPS data that could be sent in real time if the car has a cellular connection or hijacks the cellular connection in your phone when you connect it to the car.
Why do you think this is more likely to happen with this new regulation, when most modern cars already have a functioning GPS module for navigation and cellular connection for software updates?
It’s the standardizing that worries me. When it’s required, people probably aren’t going to be able to truly turn off their GPS (maybe this is already a thing, I don’t know).
Edit: And when it’s classified as a safety feature, it will [most likely] be illegal to disable, making car owners criminals if they refuse to be tracked.
Using GPS is not tracking.
To calculate a speed, you need 2 different locations at some time delta (2 different times). How is recording locations, even just 2 over the span of some time delta, not “tracking”?
The car is only tracking itself. No information needs to leave the car. I assume that’s not what people are talking about when they say “tracking”.
Good points
It is great! Slow down MF’s!!
Is this about speeding?
Or is this about getting every car to broadcast it’s location data?
Good thought, but that’s happening anyway unfortunately
How does the car know the speed limit?
I’m surprised California dealerships aren’t on top of this as a huge threat to their industry. Everyone will want to buy a car out of state.
California is a massive market and has huge impacts on car manufacturing across the US. Put it simply, if a car can’t pass inspection in CA then it is almost not worth selling it. A car bought in Pennsylvania will have additional parts and components to pass CA smog standards. Not only would it hurt their brand loyalty to have a car incapable of being sold in CA, but it may simply be cheaper and simpler to build the capacity in for all cars instead of having two slightly different trims.
I don’t really care about the honking so much as I do the fact that this mandates that the car track its position.
It already does, and auto manufacturers already share or sell this data.
Heck, because there’s a massive loophole in consumer privacy around the government buying data, any government agency can just go directly to a vehicle manufacturer and ask to buy the data.
There was a big flap about this regarding car insurance recently, but as pointed out by the EFF (How to Figure Out What Your Car Knows About You), industry folks have been looking at monetizing this data for a while for all sorts of purposes, including advertising, consumer data sales, and even behavior analysis to understand how to better force consumers to pay for vehicle-based subscriptions.
We own nothing, not even our privacy.
“[an] integrated vehicle system that uses, at minimum, the GPS location of the vehicle compared with a database of posted speed limits, to determine the speed limit, and utilizes a brief, one-time visual and audio signal to alert the driver each time they exceed the speed limit by more than 10 miles per hour.”
Honestly the only part of this that is unreasonable is that it isn’t immediately followed with “the database updates will be maintained and provided in an open, unencrypted format for free for the life of the vehicle, and the tracking data cannot be used for any other purpose”. GPS is a one-way, triangulation-based signal. It doesn’t inherently track or leak anything. I think we would be a lot safer if we all could agree what speed to go.
I think we would all be safer if we recognized individual competence and attention as the key ingredient in safety, and stopped trying to replace human attention with an ever-expanding set of sensors and woefully inadequate algorithms for determining whether the driver is being safe.
Like, if they have to model the driver as someone who’s not paying attention, then the whole design philosophy of the car is fucked, and we’re designing for failure.
I agree. And the whole design philosophy of the car was fucked when manufacturers were allowed to build SUVs and oversized trucks that weigh 2+ tons and don’t require any additional certification or licensure.
The statistics around accidents with large vehicles like that are less about their operation and more that they exist at all. Accidents will always happen, certification or no. The issue is someone struck by one will be more likely to sustain heavier or critical injuries, and smaller cars offer less protection for their passengers when hit by heavier vehicles.
So rather than “you can use one of these completely unnecessary vehicles if you pass a test once”, they should just be outlawing them all together as basic consumer vehicles. If they aren’t being designed for specific utilities or business purposes, you can’t make them and sell them to just anyone.
There are definitely areas of California where going less than 10 miles over the speed limit will put you well under the flow of traffic in every lane. If you’re not going 80 on 80, you’re gonna have a bad time.
Plenty of spots on the 80 I cruise the speed limit in the 2nd slowest lane without any troubles. Just because a few people need to fly doesn’t mean the rest of the world does.
Nevermind the long stretches in Nevada where the slowest guy pulling a trailer is doing 95.
Our GPS often shows the incorrect speed limit.
And map data for speed limits is outdated at best.
Enshittification is hitting every part of society…
That’s sort of the point. Make driving a shitter experience to promote public transport or just stay off the roads all together. You’ll enjoy what’s socially popular or your independence will cost a premium.
We already prohibit collecting data on road enshittification so it can never be bad.
Hang on to your old cars.
That’d be great if there actually were functional public transportation or any alternative transportation in most of California and 99.9999% of America.
There are functional public translation systems in most medium sized cities and larger. Its just that they suck absolute balls compared to the freedom of owning a car.
Why would you spend such a large amount of money for a new car? I don’t get it. If you are middle class it is like 50% or more of a whole year of income. If you are wealthy it’s still stupid to waste so much money on a thing that generally will depreciate in value. I don’t understand why so many of my co workers keep buying cars so they can go to work and buy more cars.
We only leased a new car because it was literally cheaper to lease than to buy used last fall. The market was absolutely upside down. Plan on buying it at the end of the 33 mo lease.
In the states I can see how having a car is a practical necessity, I just don’t have faith that buying new cars is the environmental answer we are told it is by car manufacturers
Nobody should ever buy new cars!
Wait a second….
Not trying to say we should never buy new cars, but I do have a feeling making tens of millions of new cars has a worse environmental impact than driving and repairing and old car,
But I do see in places like big cities how smog can become an issue…. But we are ignoring the whole mountaintops and other environmental impacts from making the new metal and batteries in my opinion…
How about tailgating?
My friend drives a big rig and every time someone cuts him off there is an annoying alarm.
Its not just that, it’s measuring their speed and distance and if they cut in and start braking it can send the lorry into an auto hard breaking moment where the hazards come on. Give lorries space.
Sounds like a great way to track people and further moderate their lives instead of doing things that actually matter and make an impact. No thanks.
This is a measure designed specifically to reduce the amount of things that make an impact
