By DON VIA JR. – The Free Thought Project
The House of Representatives recently voted down an amendment aimed at stopping legislation that would mandate the implementation of kill switches in all new vehicles starting in the year 2026.
In November of 2021 the federal government passed the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), also known as The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), at the cost of 1.2 trillion US taxpayer dollars to be allocated up to fiscal year 2026.
The purpose of the bill, originally introduced in the INVEST In America Act, was to invest in various transportation and infrastructure projects highlighted by the Biden administration to meet certain transformative goals to significantly reframe the future of US infrastructure to “remediate environmental harms, address the legacy pollution that harms the public health of communities, create good-paying union jobs, and advance long overdue environmental justice”, according to the white House fact sheet.
However, as TFTP reported at the time, as is the case with the majority of legislation various superfluous items were tucked deep inside the thousands of pages that had little if nothing to do with infrastructure.
One of the more nefarious inclusions buried within the bill was an initiative politicians lauded as a means of curbing motorists driving under the influence; a so called “kill switch” mandated to be implemented by automotive manufacturers in all new vehicles beginning in the year 2026. Seemingly a safety device, it would allow for the passive monitoring of a performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether or not that driver may be impaired. Which would then “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected.”
While on the surface this technology may seem as though it is prioritizing the well-being of drivers, privacy advocates have voiced numerous concerns regarding the measures intrusiveness and language that appears to leave the door open for abuse by corporations or other government agencies. As it will be ran on an “open” system, containing at least one backdoor to allow authorized third parties, such as law enforcement, to remotely access the system’s data at any time.
Former US representative Bob Barr lambasted the legislation, saying —
This is a privacy disaster in the making, and the fact that the provision made it through the Congress reveals — yet again — how little its members care about the privacy of their constituents.
The lack of ultimate control over one’s vehicle presents numerous and extremely serious safety issues; issues that should have been obvious to Members of Congress before they voted on the measure.
For example, what if a driver is not drunk, but sleepy, and the car forces itself to the side of the road before the driver can find a safe place to pull over and rest? Considering that there are no realistic mechanisms to immediately challenge or stop the car from being disabled, drivers will be forced into dangerous situations without their consent or control.
The government kill switch, now included in the language for H.R.4820 – Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriation Act, 2024 has faced backlash as Republican Representative from Kentucky Thomas Massie recently put forward an amendment challenging to strike the kill switch from the legislation, calling it “a type of dystopian science fiction“. Warning that the nascent technology could misinterpret navigation of icy roads in a blizzard or other road conditions as impairment and then strand motorists.
“In order for a car to be smart enough to know that you’re not driving well and to capture all those conditions accurately, the car would almost have to be smart enough to drive itself,” Mr. Massie said. “It’s literally a back-seat driver.”
On the evening of Tuesday November 7th the House of Representatives held a debate on the amendment. Unfortunately Massie’s efforts to remove the kill switch from the legislation failed by a vote of 229 to 201. 210 Democrats and 19 Republicans voted against the amendment, while only two Democrats sided with the 199 Republicans who voted in favor of it. Eight other members abstained from participating in the late-night voting session.
They want total control and they will get it.
No! thay fu!@king will not , take your defetisom some were else
No they won’t!!
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Ha Henry, our comments crossed. I’m sitting hyper-vigilant about defeatism. It’s as troublesome as compliance, but really, they’re pretty much the same.
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All your comments are like this. That crap don’t work here. Take it elsewhere.
just one more thing the tec-ies of the world to figure out a work around , fck these constant intrusions and their laws
anything made by man can be defeated by man
Anyone with any love of liberty and has half a brain will figure out a work-around. For example: when Pres. Bush in 1989 signed into law that all newborns in hospitals were mandated to immediately get a social security number…since WE decided when our newborn daughter would get a SS number, NOT THE GOVT., I made the decision we’d have our daughter AT HOME (and hubby’s a paramedic who had delivered babies before, so, easy decision!)! And a workaround to woke “education”? Home School! Only the brain dead and sheeple will allow their cars to have “kill switches” (so the govt. can kill them, right?), using “drunk driving” as an excuse… Heck there’s folks around here still driving cars from the 50s! And I can see it now…car dealers left with thousands of new unsold cars in their lots because most folks will refuse to buy a new car 2026 onward…like all those EVs sitting unsold in car dealer lots….