Reinhard Heydrich, who was the Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia – formerly Czechoslovakia, until the Nazis decided it wasn’t anymore – was probably the smartest Nazi. He knew how to wheedle his victims into cooperating in their own victimhood.
“His Czechs” – as he styled them – would be rewarded with extra rations and less brutal working conditions when they submitted obediently . . . and punished when not. He called it the “carrot and stick” approach. It worked so well that the Brits parachuted a team of SOE operatives behind the lines to assassinate the entirely too-effective Reichsprotecktor.
Mitsubishi is the first major car company to emulate his example.
Owners of new Mitsubishi vehicles will be rewarded with free or discounted oil changes and even free cups of coffee if they agree to load an app on their phones that will track their every move – behind the wheel and otherwise – these moves (in the form of data) then sold to “partners,” including the insurance mafia – in order to more effectively dun you.
It’s being sold, of course, as a way to save people money – but the premise is faulty because the definition of “good driving” upon which the promised savings depend isn’tbased on “good driving.”
It is based on obeying traffic laws, which is not the same thing.
Ask any cop.
They routinely exceed the posted speed limit, as a for-instance – particularly when they’re chasing one of us for also exceeding it. This is necessary, certainly, since it is not physically possible to catch a “speeder” without “speeding” oneself.
But that is neither here nor there as far as whether this “speeding” constitutes unsafe driving – or just driving faster than a number posted on a sign.
Most drivers – probably every driver – agrees at least implicitly that it’s not unsafe driving, given every driver drives faster than the number posted on those signs every time they drive.
It is merely a question of degree – and of how often and for how long.
Do we really want to be tagged as not-good-drivers because we (along with everyone else) drove 40 in and under-posted 35 zone? Become moving roadblocks for the sake of obeying a secular totem pole, for the sake of a cup of coffee and a discount oil change?
Another “data point” to be monitored is acceleration. Anything more than the most tepid, turtle-cautious change in velocity will likewise be taken as evidence of bad driving – and the driver dunned accordingly. This means no more than cruise-control passing – which of course effectively means no passing,since it can’t be done effectively – safely – without significant acceleration. Forget threading the needle through herds of Clovers.
What’s desired is that we all become as Clovers (more about themhere).
The app – being GPS connected – also knows when you have come to anything less than a complete stop at a stop sign – the absence of cross-traffic being irrelevant – or made an illegal (but perfectly safe) right-on-red.
Of course, mindless rule-obeying has become the ne plus ultra of “good citizenry” as much as “good driving” – though in both cases, nothing could be more profoundly moronic, leaving aside unsafe.
People who have been browbeaten into mindless submission to rules because they are rules – who never question those rules and the authority which spews them – are the perfect candidates for the ditches and ovens which almost inevitably follow, in time.
Don’t buy any “smart products”
Find an old, popular car that you’ll be able to find parts for all over the country, and keep it on the road. If too much of your car was made in China, you’re screwed when we go to war with China.
It’s cheaper to keep an old car running than buying a new one, which will only run into the same repair problems a couple years down the road. (repairs for the old buggy will usually be cheaper than new car payments)
Last time we bought a new car was 1988 (a Ford pick-up). And I don’t do “smart” anything…I’m “too smart” to do that!