If you’ve searched online for information about buying a car, you know you’re in for a wave of aggressive sales pitches. But I’ve found a way to silence car salesmen: All you have to do is start asking questions about the increasingly intrusive “nanny” nature of cars.
“This is more of an industry issue,” a Ford representative told me. “You may want to follow up with the Alliance for Automotive Innovation on this topic.”
Like the automakers, the Alliance, a trade group, ignored me. But I’m not alone in my concerns.
“Ah, the wind in your hair, the open road ahead of you and not a care in the world… except all the trackers, cameras, microphones and sensors capturing your every move,” the Mozilla Foundation warned in a report published in September.
With today’s computerized vehicles, “every time you interact with your car you create a little record of what you just did,” the report’s authors added. Since many are connected wirelessly to manufacturers, “usually all information is collected and stored by the automaker.”
That report prompted Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) to follow up with a letter urging that “cars should not and cannot become yet another place where privacy takes a backseat.”
This is good, but it ignores the government’s own role in turning vehicles into instruments of control.
The massive infrastructure bill, which became law in 2021, contained a mandate for technology that can “passively and accurately detect whether a driver’s blood alcohol concentration” exceeds the legal limit. If it does, it should “prevent or restrict the operation of motor vehicles.”
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) thinks this is a great idea and approved it in 2022.
Of course we will be required to pay for that nanny technology, whether or not it works as advertised. My guess is that automated DUI sensors that monitor people of varying mass and metabolism will be slightly less reliable than the seatbelt locking systems that were mandated for a short time in the 1970s. Those prevented the ignition from happening unless passengers buckled their seatbelts.
“The result was that grandmothers, shopping bags and guard dogs triggered failure to start unless the seat belts of the front seats they occupied were buckled first,” wrote Mike Davis, who generally approved of the mandate nanny. The Detroit Office in 2009.
Memories of my father receiving directions on how to disable the interlock came back to me as I shopped for a new pickup truck and discovered that most of them remain in almost constant contact with the automakers. Via the cellular network they receive software updates and transmit driver data. This information is used internally, sold to third parties and given to government agencies.
“There are so many ways law enforcement can unlock the treasure trove of data collected from your car,” the Mozilla report adds. “In the US, they can just ask for it (without a warrant) or hack your car to get it.”
Like many people, I don’t want my vehicle chatting me up to the mothership. If you’re looking for ways to make sure your car reports only to you, you’ll quickly discover a subculture of do-it-yourself types who hack their purchases to keep Big Brother out of the morning commute.
“My GTI and my wife’s new Toyota had the ability to collect data and transmit it via cellular or Wi-Fi,” I found posted in a forum. “I disabled it in both cars by disconnecting the antenna connections to the telematics module, it leaves the car unable to communicate, as if it were in the middle of nowhere.”
Disabling snoopy technology is an at-your-own-risk undertaking. You should assume that the warranty goes out the window.
Modifications to make vehicles less intrusive were not what the automakers and bureaucrats intended. But unintended consequences come with the territory. The national preference for SUVs and trucks over old-school sedans, for example, is largely the result of government fuel efficiency standards that create strange incentives. Changing regulations in 2010 made the problem worse. “Corporate average fuel economy standards create a financial incentive for auto companies to produce larger vehicles that can achieve lower targets,” a University of Michigan study found in 2011.
The NTSB’s latest stroke of genius is to propose technologies that “warn the driver when the vehicle exceeds the speed limit” and could even “electronically limit vehicle speed to completely prevent drivers from exceeding the speed limit.” .
Why would a driver want the freedom to respond to specific driving conditions?
I foresee more DIY modifications in the future and more unanswered questions about what is being done to our vehicles.