The Kill Switch

We live in a time when legislative bills containing hundreds of pages are passed by Congress without sufficient time to read or analyze the contents.

This results in unpleasant surprises when such bills are finally scrutinized. One such surprise has been found in President Biden’s much-promoted “Infrastructure Bill” and former congressman Bill Barr of Georgia brought it to light in a piece he wrote late last month for The Daily Caller.

Buried in the recently passed bill is a mandate that all vehicles made in the U.S. have a “kill switch” beginning in 2026 – five years from now. The feature was sold to congress as a means to prevent people from driving while impaired.

While that’s a noble goal, “impaired” is not defined. Nor are the means by which each new vehicle will be monitored, something that raises legal questions in and of itself.

Will each vehicle monitor the performance of its own driver, or will the driver be monitored remotely by some kind of vehicular command and control center?

Who or what will have the ability to disable the vehicle, and what specific circumstances will trigger the kill switch? Such things are not explained.

I’m sure many in law enforcement will be eager to learn how this will work and whether or not local LEOs will be able to disable a vehicle upon request. Such ability would have great safety benefits in that it would all but end high-speed pursuits and the need to deploy such things as road spikes in the path of a fleeing felon. The kill switch would potentially reduce risks to both LEOs and the public, but there are problematic aspects to this technology.

I doubt many of our legislators in Washington have much experience driving in rural America. Many don’t drive much at all. If I swerve to miss a deer, thrown tire, or other debris in the road, will my car shut down because some algorithm saw me momentarily in the wrong lane? What if I hit a patch of black ice on a cold winter morning and must fight to keep control of a spinning and swerving vehicle?

Will a computerized eye in the sky deem me unfit to continue my journey and shut me down miles from town in freezing weather? What about a medical emergency such as the one I had a few years back when my wife was kicked by a horse and I was racing her to the hospital with injuries? Yes, I called 911, gave them my name, vehicle description and intent, asked them to alert the hospital and local law enforcement and kept them on the line the whole time, but I doubt an all-seeing algorithm watching me drive that day would have let me continue my emergency trip.

And then there’s my eye for sinister intent. Why would a powerful, centralized government want everyone driving electric vehicles with limited ranges, that require frequent stops up to 45 minutes each for recharging, and have kill switches it could activate at any time? Limiting a population’s ability to move around, especially those individuals a central authority doesn’t care for, adds just another level of control and means to quash dissent.

You may want to buy that 1970s Mad Max car now, find a way to stash some gas, and keep it all quiet in case things get dystopian in a hurry by 2030. Just kidding. Or am I?