Hello 1984, Nice To Track…I Mean SEE You Again!
May 26th, 2011Beginning in June every newly manufactured car will be have a required “little black box” installed within. That’s right, YOUR car that YOU purchase with YOUR money will be babysat and evaluated outside of your discretion. There are two sides to this story so let’s begin with the manufacturers, law enforcement, and insurance companies (wow that’s a credible bunch of folk right there):
This box will be installed in every newly manufactured car from June 1, 2011 and on
The box is located in most cars that have an airbag and have been used to track the moments of impact during a collision or accident. It has solved some hideous car wreck mysteries in the past.
On August 17, 2002, two teenage girls in Pembroke Pines, Florida, died when their vehicle was struck by a Pontiac Firebird Firehawk driven by Edwin Matos. The girls were backing out of their driveway; investigators accessed the vehicle’s data recorder and discovered Matos had been traveling 114 mph in a residential area moments before impact.
So the boxes have helped out in various scenarios similar to this and much less tragic than this as well. The box can track if a seatbelt was properly worn during an accident as well as speed, failures in any part of the car, etc.
As you can imagine the future of driving seems to be more and more safety conscious, but who is asking to be tracked? Looks like a number of Americans already have this box in their car (this device is also used in every commercial aircraft).
The other side of this story are the critics spooked by this Orwellian practice. Much like the way I began this post…no longer is your car YOURS if its behavior is involuntarily monitored by some of the crooks of the world. Other skeptics are wondering just how much this little black box tracks, would audio ever be recorded? Who is to know if you aren’t in control of this data box.
In a few days this regulation will be mandatory. However I have read on a few different comments and blogs that the box CAN be disabled. So we’ll see…
