Black Boxes on American made Automobiles

(This article first ran in August of 2006!)

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Black Boxes on American made Automobiles

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Yes, they are there. They record whether you are wearing your seat belt, whether you are surpassing the speed limit, when you apply the brakes, and so on. Lots of information an Insurance company’s lawyers would kill to get their hands on… and now the American driver is simply going to hand it to them. It’s sorta like handing the Hangman the rope!

I have been agitating against the black boxes since I first learned about them in the eighties. I discovered one on my wife’s car the day I learned of them. I checked my car… and it did not have one. It was two years older than my wife’s sedan.

The first thing I did was contact the dealership from which we purchased the cars. At first they denied having any knowledge of the Black Boxes. After pressing them… they did admit the existence of them. I then asked that the black box on my wife’s car be removed. They said it could not be removed, or disabled because it was integrated into the car’s onboard computer and if it was disabled, or removed, the car simply would not run. We got rid of both cars.

As soon as I purchased the truck I own now, I contacted the automaker and asked if there was a data recorder on my truck. They wrote back to assure me there was not.

Now, dear reader, if you believe I am overreacting to the danger to the owner/driver those black boxes present, then you should know that at least two drivers, in the state of Florida, have been tried and lost their cases as a direct result of info recovered from the onboard date recorder on their cars.

Do you see the danger, now???

Talk about an invasion of privacy!

The automakers tell us the black boxes (data recorders) are there to provide them data, which will help them build a better automobile. Excuse me…. I don’t believe it! The US Government wants those data recorders on all US made autos ASAP. That’s ALL US cars! As of today, some US made vehicles do not have the Data Recorders.

So, US auto owners need to do a couple of things. One we need to fight the move by the government to make the data recorder standard equipment on our cars, and two, we need to get some computer geeks together to come up with a program to defeat those recorders and still allow our vehicles to run.

I remember when Catalytic converters first came out, and the government mandated their placement on all cars in the US, a cottage industry popped up, in nearly every community, in which the converter was either taken completely off the car and replaced with a piece of straight exhaust pipe, or the converter was removed long enough to hollow it out and then the shell was replaced so that anyone inspecting the underside of the car would see what appeared as a fully functioning catalytic converter.

Bit by bit, we are losing our privacy. Actually we have almost none, as it is. For instance, my cell phone will tell anyone who cares to know, and has the right equipment, exactly where, on the face of the earth, I happen to be at any given moment! The various search engines on the internet log every site I visit, how long I’m there, what I look at and read while I’m there, etc. Even the stores are integrating Radio Frequency chips into the clothing you buy. They can trace you with that little transmitter. It doesn’t turn itself off when you exit the store. Nosiree!

How much more of our freedom will Americans have to lose before we cry “STOP”! Huh?

If you want a good place to start… blistering the US government’s ears about the black boxes on you automobiles is as good a place as any!


Longstreet

Filed under:



Highway/Automotive/Event/Recorder