A massive auto safety overhaul bill has made its way out of committee and onto the floor of the House of Representatives for voting. According to Automotive News, the biggest changes that the bill proposes is the mandatory addition of black boxes and brake override mechanisms to all new cars and trucks. The event-data recorders would track information shortly before and after an accident for a specified period of time in order to help investigators determine the cause of an accident. Legislators and manufacturers alike began to push for the recorders in the wake of multiple accidents associated with Toyota’s unintended acceleration woes.
And you thought you could avoid the intrusive OnStar-type features by not buying GM vehicles.
I’m sure that those who live in states with mandatory seat belt laws know the progression laws mandating black boxes will take. It’ll start with “just before an accident” information and in a decade the Fed will find another crisis suitable to pass legislation mandating manufacturers to have the systems store years worth of data.
And not to sound paranoid, but you and I both know that “just before an accident” means storage of at least 24 hours worth of info.
I have my solution to avoiding this problem which I’ll (hopefully) be able to unveil in a couple weeks.
My solution would be to never buy another new car, once they get outfitted with the new snoop-boxes.
The auto industry should be resisting this with every chip they can play, but they aren’t. Maybe if they woke up and smelled the Ford coffee, they would.
“Government Motors” pissed off a large slice of the car-buying public, which has just about stopped buying GM and Chrysler products. The VERY predictable result is that Ford has been profitable for over a year now, and Government Motors might become profitable someday (they say they are “profitable” now, but they’re cooking the books to say it).
There are plenty of excellent used cars out there, and until the Government tells us we can’t buy used anymore (sort of like Japan has done for years), that’s the way to go. Aside from more efficient engines (not the only reason to buy a car, anyway), there hasn’t been an automotive innovation I would want on my daily driver in decades. My last good, new American car was a ’68 Plymouth Valiant V-8 sedan.
Once again, with feeling:
It’s not about safety, it’s all about control…specifically, bureaucrats’ control of your life. These statists won’t be satisfied until they control every aspect of your life.
http://www.motorists.org for a little sanity.
Either that, or learn to ride a horse. I don’t think the average horse would take kindly to any sort of “black box” being fitted.
Most horses don’t take kindly to shoes, saddle, or bridle when starting out, but we’ve been managing to get them attached in one form or another for something like 6000-plus years. I wouldn’t hold my breath on your assumption, Ham…