The feds' vehicle 'kill switch' mandate is a gross violation of privacy

That "pregnant wife in backseat" argument is so stupid, and is always being used to excuse all kinds of dangerous driving. The amount of lives saved by someone speeding with a pregnant wife is minuscule compared to the amount of lives being saved by not making driving like a lunatic possible.

I mean.. is it not more helpful if those people wait on the side of the road for 10-15 minutes till an ambulance/helicopter is there? If they are driving like a drunk driver I would assume the same risks are included...

It's easy to find out if someone is driving as though they are impaired, less easy to find out if they actually are. Medical emergencies spring to mind as something that will be hard to distinguish.

For the average medical emergency, everyone would probably be better off with the car stopping by the roadside: heart attack, stroke, confusion, … are not improved by hitting other cars, buildings, pedestrians.

How many people rushing to the hospital with a pregnant wife in the back will no longer make it before giving birth?

I would say if this is anything more than a movie trope it would be solved better by fixing your medical system, and not having to drive dangerously and illegally in the first place. Planted into a tree is not a great way to give birth.

How many people rushing to the hospital with a pregnant wife in the back will no longer make it before giving birth?

What would be the problem with that? If you don't make it to the hospital before giving birth, you don't need to go to the hospital at all. The reason you might want to be in a hospital while in labor is in case something goes wrong that prevents you from successfully giving birth.

If someone is driving so sleepy or having such a medical crisis that they can’t keep the car on the road, they shouldn’t be driving even if they’re sober. The harm to others doesn’t go away just because it’s “medical”, you are still just as dead if grandpa falls asleep and crosses the centerline. And it is still a crime to do so - you can be arrested for driving too sleepy already.

Much like CSAM, this is one where there not clear daylight between the advertised situation and other similar situations (why would you want to stop pedos but leave mass shooters able to communicate?) other than the targeted class being particularly villainized by society at large. People should really have the faith of their convictions and discuss this as a generalized thing, “what is the benefit of having killswitches in all our cars for impaired drivers” and not just pretend that it’s only alcoholics who are dangerous on the road. This will eventually be coming for anyone who displays dangerous driving even if it’s “medical” and should really be viewed in that context.

I’m not saying that’s entirely a bad thing either. Maybe we’d all be safer if our cars spied on us 24/7. But people are generally repulsed at that idea because I’m not a filthy drunk driver, how dare you treat me like one. It was never about road safety at all, it was about getting one up on the underclass who we’ve socially determined it’s ok to scorn and hate.

If you think that’s not the case, contrast our social attitudes towards using a cellphone, which is equally dangerous to other drivers, and equally willful, and is so broadly accepted that people get upset about new laws to stop it. Clearly with some of these medical issues, it’s not because of the harm per se but because of the social villianization - it’s okay to hate drunk drivers or fat people, and we don’t have that radicalization 24/7 against these other (equally if not more dangerous) behaviors.

https://journalistsresource.org/economics/cell-phones-and-dr...

Also, reminder that alcoholism is a medical problem too, not sure how that take gets started in the first place. But overweight and alcoholism are definitely villianized because of the perception that it’s “your fault” whereas not getting enough sleep last night is not your fault at all! It’s quite difficult to talk about some of these topics for a lot of people because “drunk driving bad”… but in a harms sense it’s no more harmful than grandpa getting behind the wheel and crossing the centerline because he’s 75 and not a good driver anymore. And both individuals do consciously make that choice.

And if grandpa or a narcoleptic have a right to drive to work because that’s what our society requires of them… so does the alcoholic. It’s weird to give people a “drive while impaired” pass when the idea is supposedly about harm reduction - again, you’re just as dead if grandpa crosses the centerline as if a drunk driver did it.

If it's an emergency and you're far enough that this is an issue, waiting for the emergency vehicle is probably faster (they also have access to meds that will slow down contractions or make them less painful).

(edit: I don't have a strong opinion on the original subject, but I think you're right. I just don't like your example, hence my comment)

Either the American medical system is in even worse shape than I thought or you're far too credulous when it comes to Hollywood tropes. Labor rarely works like it does in the movies and unless you live in extremely remote places (in which case you should probably have a midwife on call) you should have ample time to drive to a hospital. Often the mere act of going somewhere else (i.e. leaving the house) can "reset" labor.

If you're already in the actual process of giving birth, you definitely shouldn't be in a car going anywhere. The last thing you want to do with a pregnant person in labor is drive recklessly and endanger the lives of everyone involved including passengers of other vehicles and pedestrians.

If you have a medical emergency, you should call an ambulance. You're not a trained emergency vehicle driver. You're stressed and potentially in shock. You're not safe to drive. If you drive in such a reckless way that you're indistinguishable from a drunk driver, you're not safe to drive and you're a danger to yourself and everyone else.

Presumably 1:1 is the minimum acceptable. Whether the actual ratio is predictable or calculable is another matter.

That's going to be a tiny percentage of the lives that are currently lost each day due to distracted and impaired drivers.

Not that I think a kill-switch is a good idea as it's a technological solution to a law enforcement issue - that rarely works out well, especially when the tech is in the hands of the consumer.

Unfortunately, there's a huge public bias towards driving and whenever there's discussion of limiters, people often come out with rare edge cases and ignore the very large numbers of problems that comes with unlimited vehicles. Personally, I think the problems are best solved with standard law enforcement procedures - a cop sees someone speeding, so they pull them over and get them fined.

Why should people have to drive desperately to the hospital in an age where intensive care ambulances and helicopters exist?

Or are maybe going to be involved in a car crash due to the kill itself.

Driving on public roads might be a privilege, but I don't think you can say the same about private roads.

Driving is most certainly a right, just like your ability to post on the internet is a right.

The fact that people think it’s a privilege graciously given by the government to a grateful people is a big part of the problem.

I'm not particularly unhappy about getting certain drivers off the roads.

Why are you so convinced this technology will never false positive flag yourself?

I’m baffled that so many HN commenters look at a bill written by lawmakers and assume that 100% perfect, no false-positive drunk driving detection technology can be produced and shipped in a couple years and that it will never, ever trigger on themselves. Only the bad people.

Driving is a privilege, not a right.

In the US, the ability to drive commonly determines other abilities such as working, buying food and keeping scheduled appointments - inc medical ones and ones mandated by governments.

For a sizable % of the population: Driving is a privilege in the same way that being housed, eating, keeping needed health and not suffering persistent government penalties are all privileges.

The solution to this is actually fairly simple: allow an override, but if you get caught breaking the law having overridden it without a good excuse, have very harsh penalties. The same would work for automatic speed limiters.

Surely this hypothetical is not actually any worse than the same robber clobbering you with said bottle to achieve the exact same outcome today?

How frequent are such situations? With safety stuff you always have to weigh lives saved when the safety measure works as intended against lives lost when it doesn't.

E.g., seatbelts save about 15000 lives a year in the US. But occasionally someone is killed who would not have been killed if they hadn't been wearing a seatbelt, like this guy [1] whose neck was fatally compressed by his seatbelt. Politifact had occasion to look into deaths due to seatbelts [2] and found them rare, and worked out that if every crash that ended up with the vehicle on fire or in water with the occupants wearing seat belts ended up killing them it would be a couple hundred or so per year. The real number is going to be much lower than that.

I can't find any statistics on pyroclastic flow in the US, but in the last 100 years it looks like there have been under 100 deaths from volcanoes, which should be a superset of pyroclastic flow deaths.

How many more would there have been if those who avoided being one of those 100 by fleeing in their cars had cars equipped with the new system? I'm guessing that it would be less than 10x as many, since it is mostly only going to people who stuck around long past when evacuation was called for. So 10 per year.

As a check on that, I've seen estimates that over the last 2000 years in North America there were around 5000 deaths from volcano, so on average less than 3 per year. Since most of those were at times when people didn't have cars, volcanology was much less advanced, and communication was much slows that number should be higher than what we'd have nowadays even if cars were very flakey when fleeing from volcanoes. This suggests that my guess of 10x is very generous.

Drunk driving kills about 10000 per year in the US, so to make a persuasive argument based on deaths from false positives you are going to need much more than increased pyroclastic flow deaths.

Someone has brought up driving erratically while rushing to the hospital to give birth. I haven't found any stats on that. I'd guess that it is not super uncommon, but also that most of the time if you don't make it to the hospital in time it is not fatal. (And also increased deaths due accidents causes by rushing to the hospital should be considered...).

Anyone have other ideas? If the anti-drunk driving technology only prevents a quarter of drunk driving deaths that would 2500 per year, so we probably need at least 50 to 100 deaths per year due to false positives for that to be an effective argument.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4608342/

[2] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2011/jul/13/joseph-tri...

Less dramatic but an example of false-positives with a system like this.

My 2015 Ford has an automated "Driver Rest Suggested" feature with some kind of basic algorithm that detects the driving pattern of someone who's tired (supposedly). I assume it would do the same with an impaired driver?

Anyway, at least a couple of times a month it goes off for some random reason. Right now I just hit "Ok" and it goes away. Thinking that it could now lead to forced immobility of the vehicle is horrifying to me. Every time I get in my car I would be thinking "am I going to get to where I'm going"? Telling someone you missed something as minor as a meeting because your car thought you were drunk is ridiculous. Although if this was widely mandated the response would be "Yeah, I hate when mine does that". What a future.

Impaired driving is unacceptable but this functionality would either need to be calibrated such that you're ridiculously impaired (repeatedly swerving completely across the road) or it would lead to a lot of stranded motorists (and probably still would). In cold climates especially this could absolutely lead to death.

...or driving down a shitty road with giant potholes.

https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/5bcfy1/driving_sober...

This is the biggest thing. This is the harm that will be caused. It will cause deaths, but indirectly.

Good points, I do admit I don’t know how this could work in practice. My conflictual feelings is just on how serious and real the danger is of people driving in a certain state, balanced against all the negatives mentioned.

But that doesn't mean it invades the driver's privacy.

OTOH, perhaps we should not expect a right to privacy regarding our sobriety when getting in a car.

But do all cars need and have to process any fucking data locally. I don't want that shit. I wanna drive a car not a computer

Having said that, there are arguments to be made for a standard that uses heuristics to detect impaired driving for sure. Its harder to make the case if theres like a homomorphic data situation going on where your car can 1) use data and processi locally to detect potential impaired driving, 2) it stipulates loss of function in terms of abillity to further drive (pulls you over) in exchange for eliminating the potentialitt for crime, damage, and criminal chsrging process.

Its a goddamn loss of time, energy, and life to still have this problem. A car should not need to necessarily measure your BAC as evinced by breath to detect you're driving like a maniac and maybe it should pull over, lock, and contact assistance to the extent the law allows for you to be pulled aside and deal with a simple ticket/instant fine, no need for due process (instant feedback + administrative approach to offences).

The criminal aspect is bullshit because yes its a fucked up thing but people who are impaired are not thinking clearly or able to consent to committing a criminal act in th same way they can't consent to something as simple and hands-off (no pun intended) as being sexually fucked and still be considered to have had the agency to have been lawfully able to consent to that in the first place.

It really makes zero sense: 1) simple thing: receiving sexual intercourse 2) complex thing: driving car

You can do both these things drunk but your only assumed to have lacked agency in #1. Makes no sense to me, you're almost guranteed to fuck (up) your car [car non-consensually] if not yourself as the end result lol

EDIT: i'd appreciate if any lawyer or legal person or someone you know could critique this rationale and discuss how/why it is or isnt cogent and elaborate on the extent to which it could even be theoretically implemented, even [GASP?!] if it costs us all a lil bit of money/taxes/legislation to get us to that point in legal dtae of affairs

Like your power? Your water?

Let's all take it down a notch. Trying to save lives is a good goal. Compared to those other things? An order of magnitude more human and sensible.

It's good to be cautious. So put some rules in place, sure. But to castigate the effort is not helpful or moving the conversation forward.

Only a fool thinks the goverment will not abuse this power.

Why is it always government with you people, when 90% of abuses are private firms or control freaks. Visa and mastercard abuse their power daily, random people pay scammers to write fake reviews on amazon to shut down your listings, thousands of fraudsters abuse automated systems to nuke your account on Youtube for fake copyright violations, etc.

The same things will happen with cars, and it will be used for extortion.

Given that this feature would have to be real-time and robust, and given what we know about how AI inference works, I think we can assume that the mechanism will be running locally on the car.

Otherwise you'd be able to drive drunk when out of cellphone range, drive drunk by messing with your car's antenna, drive drunk during system downtime, etc.

It seems plausible that car manufacturers will keep "kill-switch triggered" events local, if only because it's a huge liability, or because of the sentiment behind articles like these.

I think the more interesting question here is a discussion about the public policy tradeoffs of a local-only drunk driving kill-switch.

Cons: lack of user control over their own software and hardware, a slippery slope, cars will be self-driving on a roughly similar timeline anyway, and false-positive edge cases, like someone having a medical emergency getting blocked for driving weird on the way to the hospital.

Pros: 100s of lives saved in the first years, ~100,000s lives saved globally after full global saturation, a reduction in the need for drunk driving enforcement (which itself is extremely totalitarian, with traffic stops, checkpoints, court fees, jail time, suspended licenses, manslaughter convictions, lost jobs, etc.)

I lean against on software freedom principles alone, but it's an interesting decision space, because it's easy to limit specific harms and there is a lot to be gained, even in pure liberty terms. A world where someone who blacked out wakes up with a manslaughter or murder charge does not feel entirely free or fair either, since the conscious action they took was "drink until lose control of drinking." Many of us would rather get pulled over by their car than by a cop, I suspect.

CSAM isn't just an arbitrary violation of law in context of phone monitoring. A false positive on CSAM detection won't just "report you to authorities". It will straight up ruin your life. In terms of false positives, you'd be better off with a car that cuts off your hand when it detects alcohol in your breath, than with a CSAM scanner. The impact of losing a limb on your life will likely be less than having a mere suspicion of you perusing CSAM go around in the community.

Data analysis in cars has become the norm. That doesn't mean all data collected will be uploaded to the cloud.

Your phone keeps track of how many apps you open when and how often to get good battery life, and it's not a problem unless you're a dissident living in an oppressive state. Sure, your phone may be full of trackers and other privacy violations, but that particular tidbit isn't accessible anywhere but locally.

I wouldn't want one of these cars, but that has very little to do with the car storing a flag that says I'm not drunk. It's all the other crap that irks me.

There should be a way for everyone to compromise (put the data privacy angle aside for a moment) and allow for cars to heuristically detect impaired driving in exchange for reducing it to a simple, routine traffic ticket like speeding or at worst, stunt driving. Stunt driving shouldn't even realky be possible, technologically or otherwise (in terms of going insanely fast enough to allow for that capabillity)

So it really shouldnt then. Simple answer, there needs to be market pressure against this shit. For apps, (Apple) only BUY the checkmark ones that offer not lifetime but just like buying it

I think these should be installed in cars in such a way that they can be removed by owners. And then make removing it a crime.

In the foreign invasion (or US govt goes full fascist) case, people can remove these devices.

Meanwhile many if not most high-speed chases won't happen any more, because the person being chased didn't plan ahead.

There will still be getaway cars, etc. where the device was removed. That's no different to what we have now, and it'll be an extra violation to charge them with when they're caught.

Since driving is, and has always been a privilege and not a right, I don't see a problem with having a remote kill switch that cops can use in specific cases.

Or even a cop that really dislikes another cop. This is pandoras box.

Where was freedom of movement restricted in the United States? I heard of restrictions in other countries, but not here. I spent all of peak COVID in North Dakota and Minnesota, so I understand things were likely different in other places, but I don't remember hearing about any sort of travel bans within the country.

Freedom of movement was restricted multiple times in the last 200 years; COVID was hardly the first.

I'm not arguing that this case is ok, though.

You’ve got that the wrong way around and your airline analogy isn’t apt.

In the first place, rights are not granted by interpretation of the law. They exist naturally unless circumscribed by it.

In the second place, airlines are private companies and have a wide mandate to deny service based on various conditions stated in their terms.

Another example is driving licenses: driving is a privilege, not a right. If it were a right, there would be no such thing as a "license" to drive, and anyone, regardless of age or ability, could drive a motor vehicle anywhere.

the vehicle was making the decision locally

Based on what? Are you asserting that data determining the decision, isn't in any way guided by law or regulation?

You won’t be allowed to drive legally on public roads after you are found guilty in court.

There is a world of difference between that and not being able to operate the vehicle you own on private or public areas after a computer receives a command.

I think that is a choice because privacy is more established in constitutional law than autonomy. Note that privacy was the mechanism for Wade v Roe.

There’s nothing fundamentally about EVs that make them more conducive to government control. In fact, EVs can be charged from any AC power source, and it’s trivial to make electric yourself these days but nearly impossible to make gasoline in your backyard.

Adding a specific clause would be self defeating. A poorly worded, overly broad clause which can be twisted to mean whatever they might want later is much better.

In this case "decide" can mean "did the local government ask nicely" or anything else.

But on the other hand I'm sorry to inform you that your insurance has gone up, because we found that drivers in your neighbourhood are in general 2498% more likely to have accidents.

These types of statistical analyses are exactly why insurance is as cheap as it is.

I'm no fan of all the discounts insurance companies hand out for handing over private data like driving behaviour or healthcare stuff, but insurance companies with no risk management can't compete in any kind of open market.

I would argue that in terms of broader accessibility of insurance, these microtargeting approaches may actually be an improvement for many. If you live in a troublesome neighbourhood you may be paying through the nose for getting categorised as "one of the bad ones", but these individual data points can help prove you're a responsible driver and escape some of the cost of having a shitty start in life.

I'm still against these data collection practises ("you want privacy? Live in a rich neighbourhood and get a college degree!", plus a lack of any kind of law preventing these companies from sharing or selling that data) but there are solid arguments in favour of feeding insurance companies more data.

I believe insurance companies already look at your location when deciding premiums, so this would just give them greater granularity on your actual driving habits.

I don't know what it's like in USA, but where I'm from insurance premiums change a lot from location to location, so much that some people change their residence to a cheaper city.

... your insurance has gone up, because we found that drivers in your neighbourhood ...

That's what happens now. This would be "your insurance has gone up because you are more likely to have an accident. If you drive more carefully you can get a discount."

It's actually a thing already here in the UK. Many insurers let you get a black box and if it shows that you drive carefully you get a discount on your premium.

A lot of insurers will give you a discount if you let them fit such a "telematics" box to your car.

And for bonus points (pun not intended) will suspend your insurance because they think you're speeding even when you're not [0], with not a lot of recourse.

Driving without insurance could get you a £300 fine and 6 points on your license - enough to cancel it in one go if qualified less than 2 years, which is usually the target audience of these boxes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67335868

Well, I'm in the UK but not a driver (cyclist by choice). My point is that the black boxes should be almost mandatory (or at least fitted by default) in order to detect health problems which I don't think the insurance company provided boxes do. Have it be a standardised device and provide the data to the owner so that they can decide on whether or not to provide that data to third parties (probably worth having anonymised data available to the government too). It could be a very useful early warning of a number of conditions as well as providing an incentive for drivers to pay attention.

Reminds of when tomtom sat nav data was used to find locations where users where speeding to set up speed traps

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/apr/28/tomtom-sa...

They have been doing this in the US, for some time.

Fleet cars tend to have these systems, as do trucks. I have a friend that drives 18-wheelers, and often complains about getting nagged by Safety, when he does something out of bounds, or, more often, when drivers around him drive out of bounds.

It’s definitely an insurance thing, with his company. They probably save millions per year, using that system. I explained to him that’s why they’ll never make an “exception” for him, because he’s skilled and experienced. The system is there for all the low-rent knuckleheads they hire.

But you can just take your car and blast 150+ down a residential street if you'd like. Just insane. It's a solved problem, just need enforcement.

There are already a solutions, it is called police, speed traps, fines, and license revocation. Not everything has to be done with preventative measures by a nanny state.

I don't really know why cars are allowed to be sold to go such ludicrous speeds in the first place. Sure, there's no speed limit on the Autobahn, but there aren't many countries where you can legally drive that fast anywhere.

Short bursts of acceleration may be required for evasion sometimes, even at high speeds, but you don't need to drive 160 km/h for more than a minute, and you won't be hitting the Autobahn if your car is sold in South America.

In the UK, when looking at google drive maps I can already see the speed limit correctly in 99% of situations. This is occasionally incorrect due to recent changes or roadworks, but not very often. It also warns of upcoming fixed and mobile speed cameras. This is ironic as such trackers used to be illegal in Europe but are now built into European cars/mapping apps.

It's a solved problem, just need enforcement.

In reality it's a political problem. Here in the UK, certain right-wing media outlets and personalities are often complaining about the "War on Motorists" which is ironic as when you look at RTC data, it's the motorists that are massacring pedestrians and other road users.

Sometimes sudden braking is due to other drivers, animals, etc.

Those events will be much rarer than the type of late braking that poor drivers will make due to lack of observation. It'd be trivial to separate out the emergency stops from the everyday driving data.

That just opens the door to the driving version of "your grandma had cancer, so you won't get health insurance".

I think that highlights the stupidity of a privatised health insurance system. Not wanting to know about health problems due to a financial disincentive is not a sensible way of managing a populations' health, when typically prevention is much cheaper and more effective than waiting until obvious symptoms show up. I suppose it depends on whether profit is more important than the population's health.

which I haven't actually read) is also imprecise in mandating technology that doesn't currently exist.

The technology exists.

The law is at https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684... .

The definition is:

    In this section:
            (1) Advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention 
        technology.--The term ``advanced drunk and impaired driving 
        prevention technology'' means a system that--
                    (A) can--
                          (i) passively monitor the performance of a 
                      driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify 
                      whether that driver may be impaired; and
                          (ii) prevent or limit motor vehicle operation 
                      if an impairment is detected;
                    (B) can--
                          (i) passively and accurately detect whether 
                      the blood alcohol concentration of a driver of a 
                      motor vehicle is equal to or greater than the 
                      blood alcohol concentration described in section 
                      163(a) of title 23, United States Code; and
                          (ii) prevent or limit motor vehicle operation 
                      if a blood alcohol concentration above the legal 
                      limit is detected; or
                    (C) is a combination of systems described in 
                subparagraphs (A) and (B).

            (4) according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, 
        advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology can 
        prevent more than 9,400 alcohol-impaired driving fatalities 
        annually; and

"""Manufacturers such as Volvo have experimented with offering alcohol-detection systems as optional equipment. A public-private partnership called the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS) project is also road-testing a passive alcohol sensor that detects the driver’s blood-alcohol content (BAC) by measuring the ambient air in the vehicle. How many lives the technology might save would depend on how it is implemented."""

Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety lists two technologies, "Breath System" and "Touch System" at https://dadss.org/ with https://dadss.org/news/updates/when-might-the-dadss-technolo... listing timelines showing the technology exists, and should de deployable well within the time limits of the legislation.

You want a computer to decide on whether the driver is too drunk to drive, but how do you determine that?

See the DADSS link.

See https://www-esv.nhtsa.dot.gov/Proceedings/27/27ESV-000293.pd... for "DRIVER ALCOHOL DETECTION SYSTEM FOR SAFETY (DADSS) – A VEHICLE SAFETY TECHNOLOGY APPROACH TO REDUCING ALCOHOL-IMPAIRED DRIVING – A STATUS UPDATE", which also points to "SAE J3214 standard, Breath-Based Alcohol Detection System, finalized in January 2021, which was specifically developed to provide the testing specifications adopted for breath sensors in fleet vehicles" (available For $114 at https://www.sae.org/standards/content/j3214_202101/ ).

See https://www-esv.nhtsa.dot.gov/Proceedings/27/27ESV-000291.pd... for "DRIVER ALCOHOL DETECTION SYSTEM FOR SAFETY (DADSS) – RISK BASED APPROACH TO ALCOHOL SENSING OUTCOMES MODELING" describing how they balance the issues.

And what do you do if you decide the driver is too drunk? Killing the car is a terrible idea if this decision is made in busy traffic at speed. Should an autopilot take over?

The legislation says only "prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected". It directs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to figure out the details. It could be that preventing the car from starting is determined to be the only requirement.

This shouldn't be hidden away in another giant bill

This looks very much like what goes into giant bills. DADSS has been in development for over a decade.

Nothing seems wrong with the law.

The problem with claiming the law mandates a ‘kill switch’ is that most people on reading that claim will assume it means a remote kill switch. The law does not mandate - or even contemplate - a remote kill switch. So saying this is a ‘kill switch’ law is misleading. If you want to call it something snappy, a less emotive word like ‘lockout’ might be appropriate.

People choosing to call this a kill switch are making an emotive, inaccurate word choice to advance an agenda. That is precisely the kind of behavior fact checking is intended to correct.

This isn’t advanced math. A AND B is false if either A or B is false.

The requirement does not apply to all new vehicles right way, nor even after the NHTSA requirement goes into place, but between 2-3 years after that requirement.

And the requirement can be pushed back a few years if needed.

A safety interlock is not a kill switch.

The bill does not require a kill switch nor safety interlock! It says only "prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected". The "or" is important.

From the risk paper I linked to earlier at https://www-esv.nhtsa.dot.gov/Proceedings/27/27ESV-000291.pd..., "Depending on the intended use of the device, a range of outcomes might occur; the car could be prevented from being put in gear, could be limited to lower top speed using a “limp mode,” or the driver could simply be given a warning."

The first two of those would definitely "limit motor operation" as required by the law, but the middle is not meaningfully described as a kill switch.

The details of how it should work are yet to be decided.

I think this bill is a good idea and a good safety measure

I’m curious: Do you also think that automakers can produce good drunk driver detection and ship it in a couple years?

Are you willing to have a car that some times false positive flags you as drunk and shuts down?

Or are you assuming the technology is so perfect that it can’t possibly ever apply to you?

My guess is that police officers hate paper work and this would generate a ton of paper work, court appearances etc.

My (European) opinion is the the best option here is really to provide public infrastructure (night buses etc) that enable the drunks to get home without driving.

In my backward state, police won't arrest someone coming out of a bar, no matter how drunk they are, unless someone calls to alert them. (bartenders are suppose to cut them off if they seem drunk, yeah right!)

However, the police will set up a "sobriety check" road stop, after warning you in the local newspaper where the checks will be! These road stops are usually off highway exit ramps far from any bars. So, yeah, too many cops drink and drive, I'm guessing.

Simple: You can't do anything if you buy the ire of most, if not all, residents and businesses in your jurisdiction.

Everyone likes to go out and eat and drink, and at least here in the US driving cars is just as much a way of life and thus a practical right as it is a legal privilege. Dining venues and residences generally are not in walking distance, and thus necessitates driving a car.

Drunk driving laws exist to police the particularly egregious offenders who end up causing or could cause harm, but the police know that if they try enforcing those laws on everyone they will quickly lose support from the people they need to protect and end up unable to enforce any law.

That's why police don't arrest restaurant goers and also why I suspect this mandate will immediately die once it becomes widely known.

Smart people are the ones who made nukes and all this tech. Definitely people worth being suspicious of for sure. Don’t kid yourself thinking that intelligence is some magical panacea that makes people moral.

"... who think it'll be different this time as opposed to our whole known human history."

You give them too much credit.

I don't think they believe it will be "different this time".

They believe: "This time it will be done on my behalf".

To summarise, you're suggesting we shouldn't worry about a worst-case interpretation of the law, because you're confident that we'll have a best-case interpretation of the law.

The path to hell is paved with generous assumptions that government won't take full advantage of the powers it granted itself

Attempt to run away from terrorists -> death

You can just cap it at 10-20KM/H (or miles) extra if that's the argument.

Im not necessarily for it. But there is definitely an argument to be made, speeding is the cause of 30% of all traffic deaths: https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding#:~:text=Dangers....

That's not how that works, syntactically or logically. The sentence has a distinct meaning that is not preserved when trying to cancel our the negations like that. (This isn't "I don't owe nobody nothing".)

Less concisely, it means that it does prevent the government from telling you you can't move around, but it doesn't prevent the government from forbidding you to drive.

Killer robots. Call me nuts, but then smart autonomous killing machines appear, which don't require human control (so zero empathy), then it will come, slowly. It's already hard to protest against anything with police in control, and when army steps in they can take complete control (see army coups in some other countries). Taking humans and their 'silly' empathy out of the equation would just make that even easier. Just don't cause too much unrest at once.

And some countries already can't be stopped. See Russia, a mafia state. They just beated protests until 'morale improved'.

The US' Founding Fathers dealt with exactly that. They were successful.