Once upon a time, cars served as a useful tool that was subject to the will of the driver. Long occupying a place at the heart of American culture, they, in many ways, came to symbolize the country’s sense of freedom and spirit of independence.
In the past decade or so, however, cars have transformed into something else. Those traveling in sophisticated circles have come to view the long-term continuation of private car ownership as something passé like notions of freedom itself.
Law enforcement routinely tracks vehicles via automatic license plate readers the way the rest of us track packages.
Car manufacturers have turned cars into data collection devices that gather not only location and performance data but possibly also the demographic characteristics of occupants and the conversations they’re having.
New features that make cars more autonomous are celebrated as signs of progress, with little consideration of whether such advancements take autonomy away from those behind the wheel.
It would appear whatever vestiges of freedom cars continue to afford us may soon be in the rearview mirror, as last month, the Department of Transportation released a plan to imbue vehicles with what has been dubbed vehicle-to-everything technology.
According to its nonbinding plan, the DOT “is committed to reducing deaths and serious injuries on our nation’s roadways.”
To do this, the document states, the DOT is seeking to enable vehicles with the ability to “communicate with each other, with other road users ... and with roadside infrastructure, through wirelessly exchanged messages.”
The information that would be exchanged between vehicles and everything else would include data concerning a vehicle’s location and actions, as well as information regarding roadway conditions and traffic.
The implementation of this technology, the document states, will have the possibility to “improve safety, prevent crashes, optimize system performance, enhance traveler mobility and accessibility, improve the efficiency of goods movement, mitigate negative environmental impacts, and address disparities in transportation equity.”
However, despite these grand claims, little evidence is provided to support them, while matters of privacy are largely glossed over.
“Participants must be informed of privacy practices and provided with understandable notice and provided options for consent,” it continues. “[Personally identifiable information] collected should be the minimum necessary for the purpose for which it is collected, maintained for the shortest time practical, and not used for any other reason than for which it was initially collected.”
Yet, given the times in which we live, it seems unlikely that the DOT’s proposed system would be among the few instances in which a connected device collects limited data to perform a specific function and then deletes the data immediately.
To ensure such a feat, strict legislation spelling this out would be required before the technology is ever deployed, but the document does not discuss this. Nor does it discuss whether the options for consent with which “participants” are to be provided will include the option to opt out.
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Moreover, the document does not explicitly state what the technology will mean for drivers on a day-to-day level. Will it simply entail drivers having the option to receive alerts from other connected infrastructure in a manner similar to previous connected vehicle pilot programs ?
Or will it be more like drunk driver detection systems with the ability to take control of a vehicle away from the driver? And, if the latter, would the technology be able to take control of a vehicle in other instances in which safety might be a purported concern, such as in the event of a pandemic, a protest, or a climate crisis?
Daniel Nuccio is a Ph.D. student in biology and a regular contributor to the College Fix and the Brownstone Institute.
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