The Self-Driving Paddywagon

It used to be that the cops had to come for you. Maybe soon, they’ll bring you to the cops. Or the cops to you. This is in fact what happened to a couple of San Mateo, CA teenagers. The cops were brought to them by the Waymo self-driving car they’d summoned to ferry them around while they drank booze and blasted people with squirt guns. The self-driving car has in-car cameras that monitor what the people inside the car are doing and what those teens were doing triggered the Waymo to park itself and summon the Hut! Hut! Hut! crew.

Crew is just the right word, too. Five heavily armed Hut! Hut! Hutters! (plus a K9 “officer”) surrounded the Waymo.

You can read more about it here.

Will what happened to those teens happen to you? It is certainly a technological possibility. Put another way, the same technology that’s in the Waymo self-driving car is also being embedded in the car you’re probably driving right now. More such technology will be embedded in all new cars come the 2027 model year, which is already here. Every new passenger vehicle made after this model year (2026) must have “drowsy/distracted” driver technology. What that effectively means is an eye-movement monitor that relies on cameras to watch you as you drive. If the electronic eyes register eye movement that (according to the programming parameters) suggest the driver is “drowsy” or “distracted,” the car will pester the driver with chimes and warnings.

That’s just for now. Inevitably, there will be more.

Many late-model vehicles already have this technology, in anticipation of the requirement that all new vehicles will have to have it. The “early adopters” – Subaru and Toyota are two of many – saw an opportunity as well as an inevitability. Since they (along with every other car company) will have to embed “drowsy/distracted” driver technology in their vehicles come 2027, why not get ahead of it and do it sooner – and tout it as a feature? This has been the trendy thing to do ever since the entire car industry rolled over – back in the ’90s – rather than fight the Supplemental Restraint System requirement that effectively required all new passenger vehicles have air bags embedded. It is interesting to recall that when air bags were first offered – as an optional feature – they were soundly rejected by a majority of the car buying public.

This was, of course, taken as an affront by the Safety Cult – which was at that time still just that (a cult) rather than the mainstream religion it is now. Since most people didn’t want to pay extra for air bags (or just didn’t want them) naturally they had to be forced to pay extra for them and to have them in their next new vehicle, want ’em or not. The car companies decided it was better to join ’em than to fight ’em and went all in on air bags – touting them as a feature and never mind that they were forced. After all, there was money in it – and it was just easier to go along to get along.

Now we’re more than 30 years down the road and they’re all in on any technology that can be touted as a “safety” feature. They almost literally fall over each other to get first to “market” with a “safety” technology that they can “sell” as a feature. Never mind that you have to buy it. Assuming you are wanting to buy the car.

So now most late-model cars have lots of “safety” technology – with much more to come, because (per the Union cavalry officer in The Outlaw Josey Wales) you can never have too much “safety.” There ain’t no end to it, in other words.

In fact, it is just beginning.

What happened to those teens “arrested” by their Waymo self-driving car is extremely likely to happen to us. There are cameras and microphones in all late-model cars. We are already being monitored – and so is our driving. The car is fully conscious, in an awareness sense, of exactly where it is at all times and how fast it is moving and how “aggressively” you may be driving. The technology to exert control over this is also already embedded; it has merely to be fully activated. It is a near certainty – and inevitability – that driving outside of certain permissible parameters, if it is even allowed in the first place, will result in sanctions of one kind or another such as immediate, real-time transmission of your “aggressive” driving to the insurance mafia, which will adjust what you are forced to pay accordingly.

If you do something more than just “speed” or fail to “buckle up” for “safety” – if you do something more illegal than those things – is it inconceivable the car will enforce the law? Or summon the law? If you hew to the logic of all this, it is an inevitability. Just as mandatory air bags became inevitable once mandatory seat belts were accepted as both necessary and for that reason a legitimate thing to make people buy (and then to wear).

You cannot argue intelligently – much less effectively – for less of something when you have already accepted the basic something. It’s a principle that applies generally. Wear a “mask” – then take a shot.

If only more people understood this, there might be less of these things.

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