All of this “safety” stuff is eventually going to kill us – if only from exasperation.
Volvo’s latest, for instance. The company announced the other day that its EX90, ES90 and EX60 EVs will get “a host of new warnings, including “alerts” for “large animal detection on the road ahead, the presence of vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists, as well as roadwork and accident alerts using real-time data from connected Volvo vehicles or traffic management centers.”
This is all part of an “ecosystem” of safety that can be “shared with other brand vehicles through the European Data for Road Safety ecosystem.”
Here is Åsa Haglund, the head of Volvo Cars Safety Center:
“These innovations represent another step towards our vision of zero collisions. Every time a Volvo car shares safety intelligence, it helps other drivers prepare earlier to avoid accidents and feel safer.”
Italics added.
It is very important – says Haglund – to “feel safer.” She says so – so it must be so. We can never be safe enough! That is why there is more and more “safety” – which is to say, nagging and parenting – all the time. From carding 60-year-olds to buy beer (or Bic lighters) to cars that jerk the steering wheel, slam on the brakes and tell you to sit up straight! and keep your eyes on the road! 
These Volvos “share safety intelligence.” What does it mean, exactly? Well, it means being part of a collective and the thing about collectives is someone’s got to run them. Who will that be? Well, you can be sure it isn’t you or me. Implicit in that reality is that someone else (sommeone like this Haglund person) is going to be the one who decides what’s “safe” and – inevitably – enforced. That’s not how it’ll be sold, of course. One news outlet says it’ll merely “complement existing alerts (warning about) slippery roads and poor light conditions.” That there’s a downed tree ahead. Or a bicycle rider. Apparently, keeping an eye out isn’t sufficient.
Is it a bit much to worry that, just maybe, these “safety” alerts will become more than just that?
Consider the case of what they market as Speed Limit Assistance.
Taken at face value, it sounds like what they want you to think it is. Just a friendly warning that you are driving faster than the speed limit. As if you were unaware of that. Just as you are aware you didn’t “buckle up for safety” – especially after the “reminder” chime has been harassing you for five minutes straight. After the initial chime it is no longer a “reminder.” It is a punishment. You are being annoyed in order to cajole you into “buckling up” – in order to shut off the chime. In time, it will be more than just a chime. People forget they tried to to be more direct once, a long time ago – with seatbelt interlocks that prevented the engine from being started of the driver didn’t “buckle up” first. That was back in the ’70s and it didn’t sell. So they got to work soft-selling it, a little at a time. 
Wouldn’t it be splendid if they were just above-board about it and called it what it actually is? Of course, they do not do that because honest language – seatbelt nag – would not go over as well as “reminder.” It’s a low-grade torment-manipulation – like they do at the DMV, when they call you a “customer.”
As if you didn’t have to be there.
As if you wanted to be there. 
Back to the Speed Limit Assistance. In Europe, it is already doing more than “assisting.” It is countermanding. When a car equipped with SLA exceeds the speed limit – which the SLA-equipped cars know by correlating vehicle speed with GPS data – there is push-back from the throttle (which is entirely controlled by the computer that controls everything in a new/recent-model-year vehicle) to slow the car down and bring it back into conformity with the speed limit. For now, the driver can override this by pushing back harder on the accelerator pedal, but you’d have to be short bus material to not grasp that this is just for now. Once people get used to this degree of “assistance,” the “assistance” will become more aggressive. Ultimately – obviously – the end of the road is to “assist” people into complete compliance with every speed limit, all the time.
They call this grooming in the child molestation business – and it amounts to the same thing in the car business, only it’s adults who are to be molested. So it is – and will be – with Volvo’s “Connected Safety” system, which all feeds real-time data about each vehicle that is part of the collective to “traffic management centers.”
What do you supposed these centers will be managing?
Keep in mind that if you accept that “safety” is the be-all/end-all and if “safety” is defined as compliance with what they say is “safe,” then you have already accepted the necessity to control the vehicular collective.
To keep it safe!
Your connected car will now squawk at you about Danger! anger Will Robinson! Just up ahead! Then because it’s raining or getting dark. After awhile, you won’t be allowed out after dark – or because it’s raining. Wait for it.
Nothing is outside the ambit of “safety” because everything has the potential to affect “safety.” Autonomous (that is, independent, free range) driving is therefore outside the ambit of “safety” and must be locked down. They are in the process of locking it down but many people are soothed into a kind of drooly-faced reflexive quiescence by talk of “keeping vulnerable road users . . . safe.”
There is plenty of such “safety” in a solitary confinement cell, within the collective of a supermax prison.
. . .
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During the beginning of the super scary killer virus, they ordered everyone to “Stay Home, Stay Safe”. People didn’t. The good people of this country went about their business as usual, much to the chagrin of the conspirators and planners of pandemics.
The ability to ignore the great planners of society is coming to an end. The next time they suggest that you stay home, you will. You’re car won’t work.
While I am certainly against all nanny crap, at least 98% of them. I guess my line is if the car nags you, and certainly hate it if it intervenes.
I do have an IR camara on one of my grand cherokees, and it picks out people and larger animals very well, highlights them with a yellow or red box, but so far it has not intervened in about 15+ instances, even if the deer is on the shoulder. I like it when doing 50+ on a country road. You have to turn it on every start for it to work.
Women executives turn everything they touch to s**t.
So that explains Lightning Jim Farley at Ford??
So sick of this simplistic take on everything that was planned at MUCH HIGHER LEVELS than some stupid frontwoman who was “selected” to deflect attention from those REALLY in charge.
You need to look upstream to find the responsible parties. The real problem is Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street, and a couple of others. These firms exercise the stock voting rights for almost all voting shares at almost all traded companies: these financial firms pick the board members of the companies, who in turn pick executives. These boards and executives implement directives, perhaps sub rosa, which the the big financial firms want implemented (this is a really big part of why nearly every company in any given field is moving in the same direction).
But he isn’t entirely wrong, either. I seen smaller firms ruined by female executives, many times. One example was a spriting goods company that ended up with a female executive who came from a travel agency, because of DEI policies. She tried to turn the functional and solvent sporting goods company into a travel agency, and bankruptcy is now on the horizon for them. It’s an ongoing train wreck that will end poorly.
Then there is Hewlett Packard and Carly Fiorina. She probably should have been a school teacher.
The female executives that don’t ruin companies nearly universally let other people actually run the company for them.
Now, now. Sane women are horribly rare, but there are SOME of us.
One of these nags got me really annoyed in a rental earlier this year. If I toss anything in the back seat, the rear seat passenger detection gets triggered, but the seatbelt isn’t buckled, so the alarm goes crazy. Fine, I buckled in my travel suitcase, you nagging POS. When I got out of the car, it nagged me that I have passengers in the back and wouldn’t allow me to lock the doors.
Get an older car.
Good luck in finding them. And even if you can find an older vehicle, you need even more luck to find the parts to keep said vehicle in running shape. If these demons we call “leaders” have their way, we will not be able (or “allowed”) to fix them in the very near future. How ironic, in that older vehicles will become more popular, and perhaps even more expensive, than new vehicles.
Going to be really saaaaaafe when you tromp on the gas to avoid being T-boned and the car won’t accelerate, but first it will yell at you for looking sideways to see the impending collision.
I sold an SUV because it did this to me. At an intersection in a snow storm I got the green light. Just as entered the cross some clover misjudged and was sliding through, not sure if he didn’t see the red or was just over driving his brakes. In any case I tried to accelerate and -nothing- happened. Just dash lights and the sound of ABS whirring. This thing’s traction control not only cut power but was also pulsing brakes on spinning tires. I wasn’t hit but it was close. I cleaned that thing up and it went on Craigslist within two weeks, replaced with a lower mileage previous generation before traction control was put in. I still have that car, not sure how much longer I can limp it along though. It runs fine but the frame and body need rust repair love. Free market, yeah, bull. I’d happily buy another just like this 2001 if I could but the government and manufacturers won’t allow it.
Indeed, Anon –
I am trying to figure out how manage the purchase of an analog daily driver back-up, as my old truck is getting very old. I’d ideally like to get something similar; just the fuel injection and no other got-damned computers running anything. Manual transmission is a must. The crazy thing is that a truck just like mine – except with twice the mileage – now costs what I paid for mine back in 2008.
Many a would-be fender bender situations I have escaped (no harm to either vehicle, mine or theirs), because I was “allowed” (eye roll) to smash the gas pedal down and GO! Screw what the speed limit is for the moment. I cannot help but think that one of these days, these “connected”, safety-laden vehicles will also “assist” us right into a semi, off a bridge into the water, etc. All for our “safety”, I am sure. As for the nagging? Good grief, the constant nagging and warnings would be enough to drive any sane driver into insanity before reaching “Point B”.
With all this high tech “safety” equipment being pushed on us some people still wonder why I’m looking for a 2000’s vintage truck for my next vehicle.
Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaah is all they can say. 🙂
“2000’s vintage” LOL I’m old.
Same here Philo.
As if safety was not an illusion in the first place. Life is a terminal disease. No one gets out alive. No doctor has ever “saved” a single life, and neither will any “safety” features of any motor vehicle. They may prolong life, or shorten it, but will never save it.
There is a parallel industry where “nanny control” is already in place…
When it comes to “nanny control” it already exists in large commercial aircraft.
Fly-by-wire systems make it much easier to exert control and limit what can be done while exceeding normal operating parameters.
Boeing aircraft (which are designed and made in the USA) allow the pilot to exceed any operating parameters, which may just be necessary to either avoid or minimize a critical incident.
Airbus aircraft (which are designed and made in Europe) will not allow the pilot to exceed normal operating parameters even if the pilot deems that operating outside normal parameters is necessary to avoid or minimize a critical incident.
The “Europeanization” of automobiles in the USA is coming, if it is not already here…
After that Airbus flew into the trees at an air show the 777 Flight Controls design/build team (pats self on back) made sure there was a disconnect allowing the pilots direct input to the fly by wire control system. Don’t like what the flight control computer is doing hit that switch & it’s out of the loop. Flight envelope protection is then not active but at least 35 years ago pilots were smart enough to handle that.
We also added a mechanical control for two spoilers and the stabilizer trim. Lose all electrical and you can maintain level flight ‘till the electrics get sorted out. Airbus doesn’t do this. The battery on an airliner is good for a few minutes allows time to get the RAT deployed & get some power back on line.
Later on found out the Airbus forest episode was really the pilot hitting the power too late in his low speed pass it wasn’t the flight computer forcing a landing mode.
Given that there are criminal psychopaths who would LOVE to bring back the outright medical tyranny we saw during COVID, it was just a few years ago that corporate media and government even tried framing face diaper and COVID vaxx mandates as necessary for “Saaaaaaaaaaafety”. Nevermind the fact that such draconian measures were ALL BS, but there are people who STILL belieeeeeeeeeeve those measures were necessary for “Saaaaaaaaaaafety”.
As for automobiles that have all this “Saaaaaaaaaaafety” technology, I wouldn’t put it past government to try to outright BAN driving automobiles that DON’T have ANY such technology and, given that new vehicles seem to have more and more Saaaaaaaaaaafety tech installed all the time, banning automobiles that only have a handful of such tech compared to brand new vehicles.
Odd that the people pushing and desiring this crap in the name of safety, pushed and in many cases received a deadly spike protein concoction.
Hi BAC,
Those people bought the narrative that taking an experimental COVID vaxx would keep them “Saaaaaaaaaaafe from the deadly COVID”. Remember the narratives that were POUNDED by an incumbent president, corporate media, and public health bureaucrats like Tony Fauci that “You’re not going to get COVID if you take this vaccination.”? But, studies were coming out that showed many people who were vaxxed were STILL getting the dreaded ‘Rona, and that natural immunity gained via recovery from a COVID infection was not only actually a thing, but also durable compared to what immunity if any one gained via vaccination.
What’s also odd is that many of these people who bought the narrative are mad NOT at those who flat out LIED, but those who refused to be guinea pigs for the pharmaceutical industry, aka Big Pharma.
In a note of irony, my employer has long-since stopped “requiring” COVID jabs every year. However, they still push the flu shot every year about this time. So, I will be masking up again from Novembre, and through the end of March because I do not take it. And now that Moderna has its Messenger RNA flu shot (more spike protein anyone?), not even a flu shot is “safe”, even if one thought it was in the past.
And the people who crow the most about Saaaaaaaaafety! are oblivious to the real dangers—and the things most likely to injure, sicken, or kill us. Like allowing “beef trimmings” for human consumption…
“complement existing alerts”
Most alerts fall into the “no shit sherlock” category. Example, on a cold winter’s day, my BMW tells me: “Bing! Temperature below 37’F”.
No shit sherlock.
It’s only a matter of time before your car turns you in for traffic infractions.
Indeed, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime”-Uncle Joe Stalin, as King FDR, called him…
We’re all Palestinians now…now Uncle Adolf is looking smarter every day!!!
Resist, resist, resist!!!
Today provides an ugly example of how needlessly centralized control systems — like those used in chip-festooned cars — lack robustness:
‘Jeanette Clement arrived at Heathrow Airport on Tuesday with time to spare for her flight to New York. She did not get out of England. Her flight from London, along with some 1,700 others, was canceled on Tuesday after a failure in the air-traffic control system.
‘Stairs and elevators were taped off, and check-in counters closed. Confusion also hit the baggage area, where screens appeared to be down and hundreds of people roamed from belt to belt in search of their bags.
‘Mrs. Clement learned her flight was canceled when an airline employee handed her a physical letter with the news. “Quite old-fashioned, waiting for a piece of paper to come out,” she said. — NYT
https://archive.ph/gsk5p#selection-8321.36-8321.180
Bad design — terminal building infrastructure shouldn’t be crippled by corrupted flight data. Was Jaguar Land Rover involved in the programming? /sarc
No one dares speculate that Russia hacked Heathrow. But I will.
Go, Vlad, go! 🙂
Could just be Lucas Electrics. They’ve been able to reliably stop travel for a century.
Volvo still exists? Dang, who knew? Don’t think I’ve seen one for years.
Here is Åsholla Hagface, the head of Volvo Cars Safety Center:
“These innovations represent another step towards our vision of zero human autonomy. Every time a Volvo car shares safety intelligence, it helps other drivers mindlessly comply to avoid accidents and feel spuriously safer.”
“If you want a picture of the Volvo future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” — George Orwell, 1984
Hi Jim,
I noticed something recently from the TV shows that I watch. Currently, watching Reacher, Season 4. No new cars are driven. Apparently, it is very hard for Jack to get away and save the country in something with lots of safety equipment and redundant nagging. A 2015 Focus, 2010 Prius, 2014 Wrangler, a 1995 Silverado, an early 2000 Ford E350. The “government” drives the new cars, but getaways require something that isn’t going to tattle on you.
Pleased the series follows the books, and they were smart enough to cast Reacher true to form. The movie? Tom Cruise as Reacher? What a joke THAT was. I haven’t followed the controversy the current actor has sparked via his interview comments.
Hi Sparkey,
I never watched Reacher with TC. Just another Hollyweird version of which box office draw will sell tickets. Authenticity was never a perquisite for movie making.
As for Alan Ritchson he isn’t a Trump fan, but I can’t say there are too many that disagree with him at this point.
I thought those losers were already herded into subarus too.