What I’m reading is that every car will have to be equipped with functioning GPS that’s going to check against a database of speed limits.
—Speed limits that can change and be out of date. —GPS data that could be stored and extracted from the dealership and sold or given to the government, insurance companies, and law enforcement. —GPS data that could be sent in real time if the car has a cellular connection or hijacks the cellular connection in your phone when you connect it to the car.
This is bad. Really really bad.
…GPS data that
couldwill be stored and extracted…GPS data that
couldwill be sent in real timeFTFY!
I agree with your first point, but the latter two:
—GPS data that could be stored and extracted from the dealership and sold or given to the government, insurance companies, and law enforcement. —GPS data that could be sent in real time if the car has a cellular connection or hijacks the cellular connection in your phone when you connect it to the car.
Why do you think this is more likely to happen with this new regulation, when most modern cars already have a functioning GPS module for navigation and cellular connection for software updates?
It’s the standardizing that worries me. When it’s required, people probably aren’t going to be able to truly turn off their GPS (maybe this is already a thing, I don’t know).
Edit: And when it’s classified as a safety feature, it will [most likely] be illegal to disable, making car owners criminals if they refuse to be tracked.
Using GPS is not tracking.
To calculate a speed, you need 2 different locations at some time delta (2 different times). How is recording locations, even just 2 over the span of some time delta, not “tracking”?
The car is only tracking itself. No information needs to leave the car. I assume that’s not what people are talking about when they say “tracking”.
Good points
-hijacks the cellular connection in your phone when you connect it to the car.
How would it do this without the user triggering it? I don’t own a newer car, is this a real thing some of them can do?
I know in my phone I have to turn on sharing the mobile connection via USB, it’s not something that just happens.
To be clear, I do not think this is currently happening, but with an update to Android Auto or Apple Carplay, it could happen when you connect, say, your iphone to your car via usb, or possibility even bluetooth.
Tech companies are plowing forward with making your own devices work against you, so I consider it a very real possibility.
It’s entirely unnecessary, your car is already registered to your name and address via title and registration and already reports GPS data back to home on nearly every car made after 2016, and your phone is always where you are and reporting back unless you have all your data connections turned off. You don’t need to sync them up at all. It’s already happening.
It is great! Slow down MF’s!!
The GPS data can’t be out of date if it becomes the authoritative source of speed limit data.
Not sure if you’re kidding, but that is false.
This will get people to pay for and/or disable this. Let’s just give you more distractions!
When I read the headline I briefly imagined a world where people who bought new cars were statutorily required to honk at other drivers for their driving.
I was SO torn on posting this to the Not The Onion community for that reason. I find the headline hilarious (as evidenced by me commenting “HONK” throughout this comment section)
I was picturing the same thing, but I imagined it was automated and I was dying laughing.
Never change
There are definitely areas of California where going less than 10 miles over the speed limit will put you well under the flow of traffic in every lane. If you’re not going 80 on 80, you’re gonna have a bad time.
Nevermind the long stretches in Nevada where the slowest guy pulling a trailer is doing 95.
Carpool minimum is 85 and everything else 80 minimum.
Plenty of spots on the 80 I cruise the speed limit in the 2nd slowest lane without any troubles. Just because a few people need to fly doesn’t mean the rest of the world does.
Hopefully this change will alleviate that problem.
Maybe in a decade when the majority of cars have them.
Ford delivers fleet vehicles governed to 70Mph. Colorado’s interstate limit is 75 outside of cities … we have to reprogram every one we get so our drivers don’t cause accidents.
Our GPS often shows the incorrect speed limit.
And map data for speed limits is outdated at best.
New cars now read speed signs as you pass them. It’s a bit of a gimmick and sometimes misses them.
I know of at least one stretch of road near me that’s missing a speed limit sign. It drops down to 25 mph around some curves, then increases to 45 as it straightens back out. The sign for 45 is missing, so cars that read signs would be driving too slow at that point. GPS apps like Waze get it right…
HONK
Someone driving at an unsafe speed? How about some distractions, that should work out great!
What will it use to determine where you are and what the speed limit is?
Google maps? Apple maps? Is there some government mapping service with speed limits that are updated based on construction?
Can I turn it off when it is constantly wrong on rural roads?
HONK
I think a lot of modern cars recognise the speed signs with cameras
A lot of rural roads are unmarked, and use the state law standard.
HONK HONK
If you’re staying within city limits; the only speed signs you’d see much of the time are in parking lots/private property, explicitly slower than the public roadway speeds.
Can I turn it off when it is constantly wrong on rural roads?
Oh you sweet summer child.
It not the job of citizens to enforce the law but I guess cops are too busy murdering citizens.
Wrong type of beeping, though I mistook it for that too. They mean an alert similar to the seat belt or door audible alerts. People who have some sort of device from their insurance ro monitor their driving get some types of beeps like this already (stuff like decelerating to hard).
Ah, thank you for clarification.
Beep beep!
Car, I’m on the highway! I know GPS drifted a bit, but I’m not on the residential road next to the highway that has a 25 mph speed limit, I’m on the highway with a speed minimum of 45 mph!
Beep beep!
Is there a minimum speed limit in the US for some roads?
What do you do in a traffic jam? Break the law by driving slower?
Mostly just freeways. I don’t think it’s heavily enforced. The idea is that cars traveling at drastically different speeds on the same road are more likely to cause an accident. It’s best to drive “the speed of traffic” because that’s what is predictable. Roads should be designed in such a way to make the target speed limit the fastest speed at which most people feel comfortable anyways, rather than just obeying a sign. So a 20mph road should be skinny and not straight. A 70mph highway should be wide and straight. Back to the point, though, in a traffic jam, all the cars are slow and therefore the speed differential is small already and therefore no reason to ticket anyone.
Frontage roads are definitely going to be a problem. This is NOT well thought out.
Haha this will make using car alerts completely meaningless
Welcome to Bangkok
It means ‘hey I’m here’ in SE Asia and it works effectively for that. Loud, annoying…but it does accomplish something.
article isn’t talking about sounding the horn.
My car beeps at me if j go the wrong way down a 1 way street. Of course it hasn’t updated the maps of the area where i live in at least 10 years so it just beeps constantly.
Are you serious?! I would set it on fire and launch it at the manufacturer’s headquarters, then plead “temporary insanity by incessant beeping” to the court.
How about tailgating?
Enshittification is hitting every part of society…
That’s sort of the point. Make driving a shitter experience to promote public transport or just stay off the roads all together. You’ll enjoy what’s socially popular or your independence will cost a premium.
We already prohibit collecting data on road enshittification so it can never be bad.
Hang on to your old cars.
That’d be great if there actually were functional public transportation or any alternative transportation in most of California and 99.9999% of America.
There are functional public translation systems in most medium sized cities and larger. Its just that they suck absolute balls compared to the freedom of owning a car.
Nope. Realistically speaking, in more than half of the cities that have some form of public transportation in the U.S., the public transportation is so inadequate that it’s not an alternative.
At one point, a few years ago, to go from the northwest suburbs of minneapolis (maple grove/brooklyn park) to the north central suburbs of minneapolis (eden prairie/edina) by bus, on a weekday, it took 11 hours, a trip farther south into the city proper (spoke routes coming out from a central hub) and mutiple MILES of walking between stops. For a 20-ish mile trip.
This is FAR from uncommon for anywhere with a bus system if you get anywhere outside the absolute center of the infrastructure. The spoke methodology meant you could get from the suburbs (and farther) to downtown and back just fine, but as soon as the busses stopped running every ten to fifteen minutes, you were looking at hours of switching routes and waiting to get from anywhere not central to anywhere else not central.
That’s not an alternative to using a car, it’s a marginally available, occasionally usable, limited choice alternative to SOME walking, SOME of the time.
Until there are 24 hour, regularly and frequently scheduled public transportation options going everywhere there are roads to, public transportation cannot be a viable alternative to all car use.
I’d settle for it being a viable alternative to SOME car use, but much of the time, outside of a handful of MAJOR cities, it’s not.
…and I took the bus in Minneapolis for years, despite having a car and a license. It makes sense when you live and work downtown, but that’s about it.
The public transportation in most cities is only functional in the sense that the ignition works in the busses and they occasionally drive between a few points in a few areas.
Is this about speeding?
Or is this about getting every car to broadcast it’s location data?
Fuck that.
The car has to track your location and regularly download the local speed limits so it knows when you are speeding? Bet it’s uploading your location too. This is way invasive and not just annoying.
Bet it’s uploading your location too.
FUD. You’re literally just making ship up to be angry about.
For now we’re talking about something not yet implemented. We shall see.
There is no need for any information to be uploaded. You are getting angry at something you imagined.
Of course there is no need. Do you think there is also no desire, or that they will pass up the opportunity? You are naive or trolling. Bye.
You are a paranoid asshole. No, not even paranoid. Just an asshole looking for things to be angry about, somehow not being satisfied with the many, many real things to be angry about, and inventing windmills to tilt at instead. I feel sorry for you.
