Here in Minneapolis, there have been multiple anecdotal reports of ICE being able to remotely unlock cars, disable them, and even open windows. Whether its true, its certainly seems possible.
Its made me very concerned about public safety if we allow our government to have this power. I actually believe being able to own and use a vehicle freely should be protected under the 2nd amendment.
Im picturing a world where the US could mass disable vehicles based on the owners score in their fancy new palantir database. We should have the right to flee danger and use a vehicle for that.
I also think the second amendment should be applied encryption for the same reason. Encryption is essential to the people's ability to mount a defense against tyranny.
They've come up with a memo saying that non-judicial warrants can let them break in. This has historically been very much not allowed.
Edit: As a quick explanation, this is more or less a separation-of-powers thing. The rule has been that for the executive to enter someone's home they need a warrant from a judge, a member of the judicial branch. They now say that an "administrative warrant" is enough, issued by an immigration judge -- but immigration judges are just executive branch employees, so this is saying that the executive can decide on its own when it wants to break into your house.
not saying you’re wrong, but we have to get in the habit of sourcing our claims! whistleblowers testified to Congress about this memo that began circulating around mid-2025.
IMO, the problem is that you must learn what "research" actually entails before attempting it, so that you don't fall into the trap of that fallacy.
Most people… eh. I don't know about the rest of the world, and my experience was in the 90s, but for me GCSE triple science was a list of facts to regurgitate in exams, and although we did also have practical sessions those weren't scored by how well we did Popperian falsification (a thing I didn't even learn about it until my entirely optional chosen-for-fun A-level in Philosophy; I don't know if A-level sciences teaches that).
Some of this is over-the-top paranoia. If ICE wants to get into your car, they'll just break the window.
It's been very long established that nobody has a "right" to operate a motor vehicle. It's something you are permitted to do under the terms of a license, and it's fairly regulated (though not as much as in some other countries).
> Some of this is over-the-top paranoia. If ICE wants to get into your car, they'll just break the window.
Then when I get to my car I can see the broken window and report it or at least know someone broke into my car. With remote entry law enforcement or ice can get in and out potentially without notice.
Just because police/ice/thieves/etc can break down my door and enter my house does not mean I am on board with giving any of them a key.
> It's been very long established that nobody has a "right" to operate a motor vehicle.
You do have a right to ownership though if it’s paid in full and you have the title. If I fully own my vehicle but someone else can control or disable it remotely then they are tampering with my personal property.
"Mechanics lien" are a thing, and the government has plenty of machinations to avoid someone from registering their car or updating a registration, which does have case law for being an action prior to taking someone's vehicle as an asset seizure. Civil asset forfeiture also has extensive case law for being used with vehicles.
When it comes to brass text and if the chips are down, your right for vehicle ownership is HEAVILY skewed state-side if they don't want you to have one. Whether it should be or not, and regardless of how much an individual's mobility and freedom is reliant on them owning a car in modern America, it's still a de-facto "privilege" rather than a "right".
> your right for vehicle ownership is HEAVILY skewed state-side if they don't want you to have one.
Correct me if I'm wrong but you and SoftTalker appear to be writing under the influence of some questionable assumptions.
The fact that the government can excuse and routinely do something while getting away with it doesn't mean that the getting away or the actions themselves are right or justified.
The discussion here is about the compatibility of government's actions with the spirit of the Constitution which doesn't provide an exemption for habituated wrongs.
>It's been very long established that nobody has a "right" to operate a motor vehicle. It's something you are permitted to do under the terms of a license, and it's fairly regulated (though not as much as in some other countries).
Sure you do, in private nobody can be prevented. You need a license and insurance to drive on public roads.
It’s pretty common to have unlicensed off road vehicles, especially in the mountain west. Farmers and ranchers often have at least one of these. There’s plenty of recreational users as well.
That doesn’t mean that this isn’t true in a technical sense. It’s correct that it isn’t feasible for the majority of the population.
You’ll sometimes also see small communities with private roads that allow unlicensed vehicles, such as retirement communities, but they often have their own standards for what is allowed.
If you are driving off-road, or completely on private property, you're not really driving the vehicle to "go somewhere" or commute or transport people/goods.
It isn't really feasible to use a vehicle for actual transportation without using public roads, at least in these United States.
So what possible cause or reason would any law enforcement have, for going into a vehicle like that and searching it? I mean, compared to someone driving on a public road and "going somewhere" while "carrying stuff" in there? Nearly none, right?
The government will soon be able to geofence areas to keep vehicles out of. Wonder if you will get a warning as you get close or if they will just cut out.
"Warning, you are approaching a closed zone. Stop your advance. Compliance is mandatory. Mobility privileges for this vehicle will be revoked"
One time, I was in a shopping mall and I had filled my cart at Target. I checked out, and proceeded to the parking lot where I was supposed to meet a Waymo. I had arranged for it to pick me up in the designated "Ride Share/Taxi Pickup Area" which was quite near the Target, but across the "street" and next to the cluster of bus stops.
I passed an obvious and ominous sign that indicated the border of the "shopping cart zone" and immediately my cart's wheels locked up! I was mortified, because I knew it'd do that! But my Waymo's over there, man! What was I supposed to do about it?
Obviously, Target has every right to corral their carts in places where they can go retrieve them. Theft is a huge, huge problem. But I was also constrained in pickup areas and I had figured, innocently, that the "Designated Ride Share" zone was the correct place to meet a Waymo with groceries.
So I had to bail everything out of the cart, and carry by hand. I learned my lesson. Only drop the Waymo pin someplace where my cart won't be kill-switched!
That exits essentially for aircraft today, albeit not automated. Try flying your little Cessna too close to the capitol mall or any number of sites in the world. You’ll very quickly and very unceremoniously be intercepted by other aircraft with big guns telling you to get the hell out.
> I actually believe being able to own and use a vehicle freely should be protected under the 2nd amendment.
Driving is a privilege, not a right. People are required to demonstrate a level of skill in order to not hurt and kill other road users too much and there are other considerations as well. I, for one, do not welcome people driving with compromised or no vision, or being subject to occasional loss of control whilst having a seizure etc.
I also don't think that it's a good idea to allow a person to continue driving if they've previously used their vehicle as a deliberate weapon.
This is so tiresome when people who don't have a single tank think they are in a position to allow people with tanks to do this or that.
Things happen because their value for people in power exceeds the value of your consent. And you have fewer and fewer ways to make your consent any more valuable to cross the threshold of relevancy.
I know it's an attractive illusion to believe that people have a say. But it's time to shake it off because this veil is one of the things used for control.
This is misleading. While there are privately owned tanks, they are all old, and lack any weapons (other than as a battering ram).
They likely could cause a lot of trouble for a local police force, but would not stand up to any infantry force in the world.
So in an actual conflict with the U.S. government, none of those tanks would be more than symbolic. And whole a general gorilla insurrection in the U.S. would be nasty, examples like Wako demonstrate that even mid-sized stands would be severely overwhelmed.
The whole idea that a Second-Amendment rebellion in the U.S., absent the military joining on the side of the rebellion, is just a fantasy.
It is misleading, but not for the reasons you state.
There are private tanks in the US with functional weapons, including both mounted MGs and the cannon. In fact, there’s a place in Uvalde, TX that will let you come drive and shoot theirs for a couple grand.
> none of those tanks would be more than symbolic
Correct, but that’s not why. A tank would be worse than useless in an insurgency.
> The whole idea that a Second-Amendment rebellion in the U.S., absent the military joining on the side of the rebellion, is just a fantasy.
No one is seriously suggesting going up against the US military with an irregular force in the US. The point is that an armed citizenry cannot be subjugated without destroying everything worth having. It’s a suicide pact between the People and the state.
I thought the point of an armed citizenry is so that they could shoot at each other as both sides think the other has gone bad. Let’s face it, even right now it isn’t the people unified for or against the government, it’s roughly two groups of people that hate each other, one side has control of the federal government, the other side has control of some local and state governments, either side sees the other as tyrannical, and it’s just luck that they haven’t started shooting at each other yet.
This idea that citizens would somehow unite against a tyrannical government has always been a fantasy, even during the revolutionary war.
The US has lost multiple wars to goat herders in pickup trucks with small arms.
As Ukraine has demonstrated, a shaped charge and consumer drone is highly effective against even heavy mechanized armor. ERA doesn't work well for multiple hits, and drones and HMX/RDX are cheap.
Tell your history lesson to a Reaper drone. You can see how modern version of people's insurgency could look like in modern Gaza. This is exactly how would citizens vs. US play out. With Palantir painting the targets on the appropriate backs and declaring anyone in the blast radius as domestic terrorist.
Sure, and from what I hear that's at the level of "war crimes", but those civilians the US armed forces are killing aren't US civilians.
People sign up for a variety of reasons; to keep their own safe is one of them, and that reason is incompatible with being the aggressor in a civil war.
Bro the way you brush off the US military already moving into the 'murderous war crimes' phase and thinking there is an upper bounds of the direction already in motion.
Did you think you would ever so casually brush off the US Navy straight murdering people with 'sure, we're doing that but...'?
Edit: A large group of Federal agents just murdered a 37 something American on the street, on video. He had a permit to carry, and his largest crime appears to have been traffic tickets. Prior to shooting him to death they were video'd pistol whipping his face.
These people are just fine with murdering Americans.
> Did you think you would ever so casually brush off the US Navy straight murdering people with 'sure, we're doing that but...'?
As I'm not American, I was already in the set of people they'd be willing to kill when ordered.
Are *the military* more likely to kill other Americans today? I do not think so.
But as I'm not American, I'm more worried that the chance of a B83 heading my way has gone from "No way!" to "3%".
> A large group of Federal agents just murdered a 37 something American on the street, on video. He had a permit to carry
There was a kid a few years back, killed for a toy in an open-carry state.
My country of birth is not, contrary to what some claim, envious of the 2nd amendment; rather, it is glad to ban firearms. Even so, we see the hypocricy of killing those who exercise their rights.
Americans harassed my mom for wearing a mask during COVID when she was going through cancer treatment. They would rather she just died than 1. They wear masks 2. Be made to feel bad they didn't care about her dying.
The grocery store she shopped at literally had to setup special hours people like my mom could shop without being harassed and pushed to tears. She died knowing most of her community didn't care if she died if it inconvenienced them. 1 million Americans died and today they say 'COVID wasn't a thing'. 1 million Americans died and they say it's nothing.
Americans don't care who dies. They/we are fucking trash now. My grandfathers' generation were good people but whoever we are now, we are so lost. I grew up on Star Trek TNG American ideals and grew up Catholic and believing in the 'be kind' parts and thought my neighbors shared that but they don't.
The current US administration is not competent to ensure continual financing in real terms.
If the White House keeps up current threats against allies it may find nobody willing to lend them money, and therefore the government will be forced to inflate its way to balancing the books each year; if they follow through with kicking out the undocumented migrant workers (even if they improve their current behaviour and limit themselves to *only* undocumented migrant workers), they mess up US agriculture at the same time; there is also visible corruption and self-dealing within the government.
The question is the level, rather than the existence of these factors.
There's been another authoritarian in my lifetime who messed with farms by actually kicking out non-native people in the way Trump threatens, demonstrating even worse corruption, and that actually did try to fund the government with inflation rather than my hypothetical of "will be forced to": Mugabe. It didn't go well for Zimbabwe, and the US military can observe what happened there and decide if that's what they want to see in the US.
You really think the US government can bomb its own citizens with impunity and not completely destroy their own industrial base that makes bombing citizens possible? The US government would very quickly collapse.
Refineries and factories don't work without people and are exceedingly vulnerable to locals.
At the moment the government with 15% hardcore support is rounding up people on the streets en masse, violating decades of established practices, while harming industrial base that depend on work of those people. And somehow pretty much everyone peacefully goes along with it. Or get occasionally shot.
That is exactly the point. It's working because everyone is peacefully going along with it. They have the consent - or at least acquiescence - of the governed. That's why they have no issues.
It is, therefore, not remotely relevant to your post starting this whole thread off saying that the consent of the governed is irrelevant and all you need is tanks.
> They have the consent - or at least acquiescence - of the governed.
They don't have the consent. And all they needed to get acquiescence was a bunch of poorly trained goons with masks, weapons, suv-s and official mandate. Not a single tank was needed yet.
Consent is irrelevant.
The only saving grace is that actual people with tanks (ie military) might at some point say 'nah'. Which I think they did in case of Greenland. Simply because it was too weird for them as opposed to Venezuela and Iran.
And? Minnesota is under strike right now and Arizona's AG just told its citizens that they can legally shoot ICE if they don't properly identify themselves or have a warrant or legal cause to arrest them. Still 95% of the nation is operating as normal, but that isn't possible when people are being actively bombed.
You can't imagine 95% of the nation operating as normal when they see in the news that another armed domestic terrorist cell got bombed every few days while being told the country is safer now?
The US government has made it pretty clear that we're two countries. There's the USA, and "democratic-controlled cesspools". Dropping a bomb on Chicago isn't that nuts when you don't think of Chicago as part of your country.
Our local municipality has (in the distant past) made all of the business park on-street parking into "no parking" zones. They also heavily enforce parking regulations in the area during actions...
Bicycles do not have software to install a kill switch. They do not have license plates to be read by surveillance cameras. They do not require costly insurance to legally ride. They are not powered by fossil fuels. Buy a bike. Learn to maintain it. Advocate for safe biking infrastructure in your area.
Sure, buy a bike. AND buy an older (but maintainable) vehicle for hauling, transporting multiple people, and traveling long distances. It’s not either or.
I have a wonderful cargo bike (urban arrow - splurge purchase for my 35th birthday and second kid) - I use it for most in-city transportation tasks, including picking up kids from daycare/school, groceries, trips to restaurants, etc.
I also have a 2011 truck with ~200k miles on it. It's well take care of, and shows no signs of stopping any time soon. It hauls stuff from home improvement stores, help family move, and takes us on vacation.
I've been debating getting bumper stickers for each of them along the lines of:
I had such an older vehicle until a couple weeks ago when the fuel tank supports rusted to the point the tank wasn't supported. There was just more maintenance needed than I had time to do - it would cost about what I paid for a modern 3 year old vehicle just to get it running and who knows what it will need next year from parts I wouldn't replace. (the new car is also electric so much cheaper to drive, though it doesn't have the capacity of the 1 ton truck it replaced so I'm stuck when I need that)
Just be aware that newer vehicles often have more things that can and will fail, and parts seem less standardized these days, so you may not be able to keep it running past the expected service lifetime.
Older vehicles (depending on the platform) often use common parts that are shared even across manufacturers. And third party manufacturers keep cranking out new stock for them.
I am hoping that this type of system develops for simple no-frills electric vehicles over time. Although laws like the one mentioned here keep piling up, increasing vehicle complexity and cost of maintenance.
Parts were mostly never standardized. The difference is when a production run ends they would sell all the tooling to a third party that makes parts under their own name. (and even before production ends parts that break often are worth duplicating). With computers when the production run of the LCD, CPU, ... ends nobody is making more. Even if you could get the software to install, nobody makes the computer at all at any price.
Fair, standardized probably isn’t the right term. Maybe common usage is a better term? I saw a video where someone was modifying a Dodge Viper and found that it used a Ford branded control switch or relay, not even the same company! Although that is a bit of an outlier.
Other parts were sourced from outside suppliers, which also supplied the same or similar parts to other automakers. Some of them were direct replacements, some were easily modified to work, and some could be robbed for components to refurbish your old part.
Transportation influences urban development. That is why most houses have a garage. There is no such thing as private transport (streets are public). Transportation has been heavily centralized since the New Deal. The bicycle was okay for most people living in cities in the 30s, now it is not because the government has favored the car infrastructure over the last decades. I think we need to start with not letting government develop their big infrastructure projects which are not resilient. Advocating for the use of bicycles might make sense in some places yet bicycle infrastructure is required.
Where I live there is plenty of bike infrastructure. I and many others don't use bike for transportation because of crime. Homeless steal bikes and parts of bikes if they cannot defeat the lock somehow. Recently a cyclists got killed in a "bike-jacking". People even get bikes stolen from their balconies on the 2nd floor. Reign in crime if you want people to use bikes more.
This is true. But it does not negate the comment you are replying to. Once you introduce kids into the mix (esp infants) - this whole narrative falls apart quite quick, ditto for elders/people with disabilities. Bikes, public transport are not a substitute for the vehicle.
I do agree that the vehicle should not be the default transportation even if I do consider myself a "car guy".
Also, federal highways are partially a national security issue, and are designed for quickly moving military equipment across otherwise isolated areas. Guidelines for federal interstates are specified jointly with the DoD to ensure that military transport can fit under bridges, and that bridges can support their weight. Industry is the other most important user, while individual consumers/families are the least considered users.
Everyone always assumes that individual choices and consumer behavior drives this stuff, and then they wonder why nothing changes even though we all started using reusable tote bags and LED bulbs. Stop blaming the consumer!
(The DoD is the largest institutional polluter in the world, by the way.)
That is very interesting. It is funny to see how influential the federal government has been on society, infrastructure and other areas of life. Specially considering that some people opposed to it during the confederation period because they saw it as another centralized authority (anti-federalist papers).
Trains are cheaper per mile but are less flexible and easier to sabotage. They are also important but there’s a reason that every country with a powerful military maintains both options.
I dunno, I live in what most people would call peak Suburbia and have all sorts of bike trails I didn’t even know existed until I got the electric assisted bike, I can range 5 miles away from my house in any direction without having to be on any major roads, and have a trailer for doing grocery shopping. I went 15 miles away and back one time but took quite awhile. All the grocery stores I frequent are within this range. When it’s warm out, I use my bike for probably 90% of my trips out of the house.
The exception is that he uses those bike lanes for shopping, not just exercise. Every suburb has plenty of great biking space (the streets are not busy!), but nobody thinks to try to use them that way.
* Extreme Weather: Severe heat, heavy snow, or torrential rain can make biking unsafe or impractical without specialized gear and high physical endurance.
* Accessibility & Mobility Issues: Individuals with certain physical disabilities or chronic health conditions may find traditional cycling impossible. (This also affects an aging population.)
* Time Constraints: For those with "trip-chaining" needs (e.g., daycare drop-off → work → grocery store → gym), the extra time required for cycling can be prohibitive.
* Infrastructure: Older adults are more sensitive to "heavy traffic" and "lack of safe places." Seniors don't stop cycling because they can't do it, but because they don't feel safe in traffic. (Good argument for upgrading roadways.)
* Care-giving: When parents become dependent on their children, often the children need to shuttle their parents around. A parent with dementia who escaped into the neighbourhood can be rapidly collected and ushered home in a car, not so much a bike.
* Theft & Vandalism: I've never had a car stolen. Two locked bikes, on the other hand...
There is definitely something to be said about bike theft. People see cars as a private space with serious social repercussions for violating. Bikes on the other hand are treated like normal belongings. This may have something to do with car-centric bike hatred and possibly the reflexive/reactionary tendency to completely dismiss the utility of bikes for transit. We have laws dedicated to the theft of cars, largely due to the fact the theft removes people’s mode of transport. Why not have the same for theft of other modes of transportation?
Additionally, I personally would have less issue with people driving due to a lack of physical fitness if they didn’t tend to 1. Drive recklessly and fast (35 on a 25 is not okay) and 2. Drive tank-like SUVs and Trucks
Severe heat, heavy snow, or torrential rain can make driving a car unsafe as well. Individuals with certain disabilities, chronic health conditions, or a plethora of age may also find driving impossible. For those with "trip-chaining" needs, extra time required for parking cars can be prohibitive. Old people don't like traffic and can escape and run away so fast you have to drive them back? And you're seriously including the idea that car theft is not a concern? These are some tortured arguments.
The correct argument here is "if bicycles become the dominant transportation mode, then the government will absolutely mandate kill switches for them too." "Bicycles don't have software" hasn't been true for years. E-bikes and wireless deraillers have been around a long time.
Bikes without software will be around for the foreseeable future. They're the cheapest and most plentiful version of bike. In the unlikely scenario that all bikes somehow become electric, old bikes are much easier to maintain than old cars.
My argument to my own post is that cameras that track cars and license plates could easily be reconfigured to track bikes and pedestrians. In that case there's no transportation mode that will save you from surveillance. The cameras have to go.
You do get the idea though, that just because bikes work for what you need to do, they won't necessarily work for what any other given person needs to do, right?
Also, why the hell have you got wireless derailleurs? What is the point? What possible advantage can they have over perfectly normal mechanical ones?
Exactly. I love bikes and live near a grocery store, but unfortunately getting to that store (or anywhere really) requires a few minutes of travel on a dangerously busy highway. It’s not safe to bike that road regularly.
I once lived somewhere that was half an hour from the store by car. Thankfully that isn’t the case anymore.
My in-laws live in a place like that. It's a gorgeous property but day to day errands are a challenge. I also fear the day one of them needs immediate medical care. The nearest urgent care is 20 minutes away and the nearest ER is at least 45 minutes away.
This, from what I can recall seeing about average car trip distance, is actually correct.
(Excluding you rural people, but depending on your city could be true if people had smaller lots and denser less car centric business areas, or more businesses in general)
A vehicle (presumably a car, since bikes are vehicles too) gets you and your stuff from point A to point B. Bikes do that too, though at a smaller scale.
If your commute or your errands aren't excessively long or require the use of a controlled-access highway, a bike's a perfectly fine alternative. The limiting factors are seasonal road or bike path maintenance and the discipline of other road users.
I hadn't heard of the requirement before. Mandatory registration originally seems to have been intended to address bike theft. All bicycles sold in California must have a serial number. A significant number of cities (most?) had ordinances requiring registration. But few people knew about it and even fewer registered their bikes.
I'm puzzled why there is so little emphasis on prioritizing bikes and other means of non-licensed transport among libertarians. Driving consents you to various things like forced ID checks, drug tests, and sometimes searches, and cars are relatively easy to track down compared to humans. In effect, car-centrism reduces civil liberties as it necessitates licensing for participating in society. And no, privatizing everything will not improve it. It will just make it worse since you'd be forced to allow insurance companies to track you to be allowed into private roads, etc.
The existence of a kill switch plus tracking in legislation very likely means the manufacturers wanted to track and sell user data and needed a scapegoat to avoid customer backlash. I would profoundly surprised if we don't find a lobbyist at the bottom of this.
Imagine driving in a remote road on a cold night, no cell signal, a deer crosses the road and you swerve to avoid it. The car thinks your drunk and kills the car.
You're stuck, no cell signal, good chance of hypothermia.
A bigger, real-world problem is that cars with lane-keeping assist will steer you back towards the deer.
Some of the earlier EVs I tried had lane-keeping assist so brutal that it was like trying to steer a car with a broken power steering pump belt, if it didn't want you to change lanes - genuinely dangerous.
The Kia EV I tried a few weeks ago just felt like it was tramlining a bit when I changed lanes without indicating (no real need to indicate, on a completely empty road).
I was visiting my parent's home recently and driving their new car. Was driving down a road and there was some debris in my lane, so I started to steer to the outside of the lane to avoid hitting it, and the car decided to apply counter steering input to keep me in my lane, pushing me back towards the debris, ignoring my commanded steering input. The fact that stuff like this exists and is common now and is wildly accepted is absolutely insane to me.
I have heard stories in Minneapolis about ICE remotely unlocking cars and opening windows. This seems technically possible to me. It makes me worry about public safety if the government has this control. I imagine a future where the government disables cars based on a score in a Palantir database. We need the right to use a car to escape danger. I also think encryption is important for defense against tyranny. The Second Amendment should protect encryption too.
The devil is in the details. The democrats for this (that didn't vote for this) need to change the existing law so it has strong privacy requirements. Right now the law is that regulations must be created - but what those regulations are is up to whatever bureaucrat decides to make them: they could be good or bad.
> A Republican attempt to cut off federal funding tied to vehicle “kill switch” enforcement failed in the House this week, leaving intact a law directing the Department of Transportation to develop mandatory impaired-driving prevention systems in new vehicles.
I'd prefer something with a slightly more libertarian bent:
The hardware is required in new cars. It's illegal to make it report false values or for someone other than the driver to record. When you press the start button, an LED shines into your skin and records fingerprint hash, and blood alcohol. This data is recorded/reported only when a public road has been entered or crossed, and erased from local storage in 24 hours.
The reporting is optional. You can turn it off. You set it up to report to your insurance company. If you don't, your insurance rates will probably rise.
What does society get out of this? People are strongly encouraged not to drink and drive. They get a clear and unambiguous signal if they are over the legal limit or not. We get some insurance data about how many people are drinking and driving nonetheless, and their actual accident rates. Insurance rates can be higher for people at higher risk, and lower for those who are not. There's no emergency situation where someone can't activate their car. Drivers' "freedom" to drive without insurance or without historical monitoring isn't infringed. You can still drive drunk on private property without consequence.
We could probably also partially do away with constructive DUI (DUI where you are drunk, but asleep in the vehicle and in possession of the keys). You can set a maximum startup BAC in the car computer. You can lower it, effective in 8 hours. Your sober self can agree that future you shouldn't drive drunk, and even if you sleep in your car, the police can't show that you were in control of the vehicle.
I wouldn't describe myself as libertarian. To make a libertarian strawman, such a strawman might claim that all safety features in cars ought to be provided by the free market. Of course, the predictable outcome is that most people won't prioritize safety in cars, so cars that spend their production budget on non-safety features will outsell those that spend on safety features, leading to at best a niche market for safety cars.
So no, I don't think any libertarian is OK with being forced to do almost anything, in principle. The very idea that you'd need to wear seatbelts or have a license or be compelled to have insurance or not have an open bottle of vodka in your cup holder is anathema. The free market should simply operate through the courts and put those that can't drink responsibly and cover the damage they cause into debtors prisons, to continue the strawman.
I would actually prefer much stricter enforcement of insurance and licensing laws, akin to say, the UK or Germany. I don't think you need hardware interlocks to do it, but you would have to have police willing to actually pull over people with fake license plates or missing insurance. That is not the case in much of California.
In my car, I regularly get a notice that I'm not being attentive and that I should go for a coffee break. It's never right and my best guess is that it's always on a straight highway road for more than 15 minutes where I'm not moving the wheel very much. I don't think this kill switch is a good idea and might attract unnecessary attention from law enforcement who might ding me for something completely unrelated (going 6mph above speed limit).
My Japanese coworker's Japanese car consistently insists my coworker is asleep.
I think it's hilarious because presumably someone in an office somewhere in Japan was told it wasn't working on white people and said "you want it to work on white people, fine I'll crank it to 11." But I also didn't spend $50k on it so that probably makes it easier.
These people are truly worse than the novel 1984 predicted. They will stop at nothing short of slavery. They must be our master at any and all costs. This is a war on freedom and the enemy is from within.
Here in Minneapolis, there have been multiple anecdotal reports of ICE being able to remotely unlock cars, disable them, and even open windows. Whether its true, its certainly seems possible.
Its made me very concerned about public safety if we allow our government to have this power. I actually believe being able to own and use a vehicle freely should be protected under the 2nd amendment.
Im picturing a world where the US could mass disable vehicles based on the owners score in their fancy new palantir database. We should have the right to flee danger and use a vehicle for that.
I also think the second amendment should be applied encryption for the same reason. Encryption is essential to the people's ability to mount a defense against tyranny.
Remote unlock is on many cars via an API.
It's the same API being used on your phone to remote start / unlock / open windows etc.
It's not unlikely to think that ICE has mandated these companies to corporate.
> Its made me very concerned about public safety if we allow our government to have this power.
ICE says it can legally enter homes without a warrant
So we’re beyond concern now
>ICE says it can legally enter homes without a warrant
Source for this claim, besides the usual exemptions that are available to all law enforcement (ie. exigent circumstances)?
Here's a representative news article about it (WaPo because they were first in the search results): https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/01/22/ice-me... (paywall-avoiding: https://archive.is/bsdv9)
They've come up with a memo saying that non-judicial warrants can let them break in. This has historically been very much not allowed.
Edit: As a quick explanation, this is more or less a separation-of-powers thing. The rule has been that for the executive to enter someone's home they need a warrant from a judge, a member of the judicial branch. They now say that an "administrative warrant" is enough, issued by an immigration judge -- but immigration judges are just executive branch employees, so this is saying that the executive can decide on its own when it wants to break into your house.
Just watched this yesterday, YouTube LegalEagles: “Unbelievable ICE Memo Just Leaked”
https://youtu.be/MGr-yWEu0hc
They wrote a memo saying they could.
not saying you’re wrong, but we have to get in the habit of sourcing our claims! whistleblowers testified to Congress about this memo that began circulating around mid-2025.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26499371-dhs-ice-mem...
Some people also need to get in the habit of researching a claim by themselves.
Pretty sure doing your own research turns you into a conspiracy theorist; so I don’t think we’re supposed to do that anymore.
Haha that's a good one. Maybe just do a "@grok is that true?".
No it doesn't. Conspiracy theorists don't actually do research. If they did, that might risk invalidating their theory.
At least some conspiracy theorists do selective research.
Selective research is an oxymoron.
The word for it is cherry-picking and it is better classified as a fallacy.
IMO, the problem is that you must learn what "research" actually entails before attempting it, so that you don't fall into the trap of that fallacy.
Most people… eh. I don't know about the rest of the world, and my experience was in the 90s, but for me GCSE triple science was a list of facts to regurgitate in exams, and although we did also have practical sessions those weren't scored by how well we did Popperian falsification (a thing I didn't even learn about it until my entirely optional chosen-for-fun A-level in Philosophy; I don't know if A-level sciences teaches that).
Your claim is not a source, so downvoted.
The people who replied to you provided the source: upvoted them.
> Source for this claim, besides the usual exemptions that are available to all law enforcement (ie. exigent circumstances)?
Context and discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGr-yWEu0hc
The TL/DR: administrative warrant vs an actual "signed off by a judge" warrant
And, to be clear, an administrative warrant IS NOT A WARRANT. It's essentially a memo.
https://apnews.com/article/ice-arrests-warrants-minneapolis-...
Source for the exigent circumstances exemption ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exigent_circumstance
Some of this is over-the-top paranoia. If ICE wants to get into your car, they'll just break the window.
It's been very long established that nobody has a "right" to operate a motor vehicle. It's something you are permitted to do under the terms of a license, and it's fairly regulated (though not as much as in some other countries).
> Some of this is over-the-top paranoia. If ICE wants to get into your car, they'll just break the window.
Then when I get to my car I can see the broken window and report it or at least know someone broke into my car. With remote entry law enforcement or ice can get in and out potentially without notice.
Just because police/ice/thieves/etc can break down my door and enter my house does not mean I am on board with giving any of them a key.
> It's been very long established that nobody has a "right" to operate a motor vehicle.
You do have a right to ownership though if it’s paid in full and you have the title. If I fully own my vehicle but someone else can control or disable it remotely then they are tampering with my personal property.
"Mechanics lien" are a thing, and the government has plenty of machinations to avoid someone from registering their car or updating a registration, which does have case law for being an action prior to taking someone's vehicle as an asset seizure. Civil asset forfeiture also has extensive case law for being used with vehicles.
When it comes to brass text and if the chips are down, your right for vehicle ownership is HEAVILY skewed state-side if they don't want you to have one. Whether it should be or not, and regardless of how much an individual's mobility and freedom is reliant on them owning a car in modern America, it's still a de-facto "privilege" rather than a "right".
> your right for vehicle ownership is HEAVILY skewed state-side if they don't want you to have one.
Correct me if I'm wrong but you and SoftTalker appear to be writing under the influence of some questionable assumptions.
The fact that the government can excuse and routinely do something while getting away with it doesn't mean that the getting away or the actions themselves are right or justified.
The discussion here is about the compatibility of government's actions with the spirit of the Constitution which doesn't provide an exemption for habituated wrongs.
brass text?
brass tacks*. That's what I get for generating half of my comment with speech to text.
ICE has to be near your car to shoot the tires out, but not to remote disable.
>It's been very long established that nobody has a "right" to operate a motor vehicle. It's something you are permitted to do under the terms of a license, and it's fairly regulated (though not as much as in some other countries).
Sure you do, in private nobody can be prevented. You need a license and insurance to drive on public roads.
I find this a very odd and non compelling argument
Just now many people have a) private land and b) private land in sufficient quantity and state that you can actually drive a car on it?
It’s pretty common to have unlicensed off road vehicles, especially in the mountain west. Farmers and ranchers often have at least one of these. There’s plenty of recreational users as well.
Compare the numbers of farmers and ranchers to the rest of the population.
How many recreational users have private land in sufficient quantities?
That doesn’t mean that this isn’t true in a technical sense. It’s correct that it isn’t feasible for the majority of the population.
You’ll sometimes also see small communities with private roads that allow unlicensed vehicles, such as retirement communities, but they often have their own standards for what is allowed.
What’s your point? It’s true.
It’s true in the same way that it’s technically true anyone* can buy a football team.
* anyone with a few hundred million in the bank.
It seems like a moot point --
If you are driving off-road, or completely on private property, you're not really driving the vehicle to "go somewhere" or commute or transport people/goods.
It isn't really feasible to use a vehicle for actual transportation without using public roads, at least in these United States.
So what possible cause or reason would any law enforcement have, for going into a vehicle like that and searching it? I mean, compared to someone driving on a public road and "going somewhere" while "carrying stuff" in there? Nearly none, right?
Farmers who own their farm is the traditional group that would qualify. That population is much smaller than it used to be to my understanding though.
I do! I call it my “driveway.”
Related: 20 days until the Daytona 500!
basically every farmer.
So is the argument that only farmers should be able to have a vehicle?
Having vehicle override would be an extremely concerning capability. (If confirmed)
Your take on “rights” if wrong to the point of insanity. You literally don’t know what rights are and should stop talking.
The government will soon be able to geofence areas to keep vehicles out of. Wonder if you will get a warning as you get close or if they will just cut out.
"Warning, you are approaching a closed zone. Stop your advance. Compliance is mandatory. Mobility privileges for this vehicle will be revoked"
One time, I was in a shopping mall and I had filled my cart at Target. I checked out, and proceeded to the parking lot where I was supposed to meet a Waymo. I had arranged for it to pick me up in the designated "Ride Share/Taxi Pickup Area" which was quite near the Target, but across the "street" and next to the cluster of bus stops.
I passed an obvious and ominous sign that indicated the border of the "shopping cart zone" and immediately my cart's wheels locked up! I was mortified, because I knew it'd do that! But my Waymo's over there, man! What was I supposed to do about it?
Obviously, Target has every right to corral their carts in places where they can go retrieve them. Theft is a huge, huge problem. But I was also constrained in pickup areas and I had figured, innocently, that the "Designated Ride Share" zone was the correct place to meet a Waymo with groceries.
So I had to bail everything out of the cart, and carry by hand. I learned my lesson. Only drop the Waymo pin someplace where my cart won't be kill-switched!
That exits essentially for aircraft today, albeit not automated. Try flying your little Cessna too close to the capitol mall or any number of sites in the world. You’ll very quickly and very unceremoniously be intercepted by other aircraft with big guns telling you to get the hell out.
It only works Like that because fences are hard to build at 5000 Feet. Remote disabling vehicles is a very different thing.
> I actually believe being able to own and use a vehicle freely should be protected under the 2nd amendment.
Driving is a privilege, not a right. People are required to demonstrate a level of skill in order to not hurt and kill other road users too much and there are other considerations as well. I, for one, do not welcome people driving with compromised or no vision, or being subject to occasional loss of control whilst having a seizure etc.
I also don't think that it's a good idea to allow a person to continue driving if they've previously used their vehicle as a deliberate weapon.
> if we allow our government
This is so tiresome when people who don't have a single tank think they are in a position to allow people with tanks to do this or that.
Things happen because their value for people in power exceeds the value of your consent. And you have fewer and fewer ways to make your consent any more valuable to cross the threshold of relevancy.
I know it's an attractive illusion to believe that people have a say. But it's time to shake it off because this veil is one of the things used for control.
You underestimate both the capacity of an armed citizenry and the hardware that we have at our disposal.
There are in fact privately owned tanks in the US.
This is misleading. While there are privately owned tanks, they are all old, and lack any weapons (other than as a battering ram).
They likely could cause a lot of trouble for a local police force, but would not stand up to any infantry force in the world.
So in an actual conflict with the U.S. government, none of those tanks would be more than symbolic. And whole a general gorilla insurrection in the U.S. would be nasty, examples like Wako demonstrate that even mid-sized stands would be severely overwhelmed.
The whole idea that a Second-Amendment rebellion in the U.S., absent the military joining on the side of the rebellion, is just a fantasy.
It is misleading, but not for the reasons you state.
There are private tanks in the US with functional weapons, including both mounted MGs and the cannon. In fact, there’s a place in Uvalde, TX that will let you come drive and shoot theirs for a couple grand.
> none of those tanks would be more than symbolic
Correct, but that’s not why. A tank would be worse than useless in an insurgency.
> The whole idea that a Second-Amendment rebellion in the U.S., absent the military joining on the side of the rebellion, is just a fantasy.
No one is seriously suggesting going up against the US military with an irregular force in the US. The point is that an armed citizenry cannot be subjugated without destroying everything worth having. It’s a suicide pact between the People and the state.
I thought the point of an armed citizenry is so that they could shoot at each other as both sides think the other has gone bad. Let’s face it, even right now it isn’t the people unified for or against the government, it’s roughly two groups of people that hate each other, one side has control of the federal government, the other side has control of some local and state governments, either side sees the other as tyrannical, and it’s just luck that they haven’t started shooting at each other yet.
This idea that citizens would somehow unite against a tyrannical government has always been a fantasy, even during the revolutionary war.
Tell that to the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, the Viet Cong, Mao, and George Washington.
Just because the government has tanks does not mean "we have tanks and nukes, therefore we'll win" has proven true across military history.
The US has lost multiple wars to goat herders in pickup trucks with small arms.
As Ukraine has demonstrated, a shaped charge and consumer drone is highly effective against even heavy mechanized armor. ERA doesn't work well for multiple hits, and drones and HMX/RDX are cheap.
Tell your history lesson to a Reaper drone. You can see how modern version of people's insurgency could look like in modern Gaza. This is exactly how would citizens vs. US play out. With Palantir painting the targets on the appropriate backs and declaring anyone in the blast radius as domestic terrorist.
What makes you think the army will go along with it? Sure some will, but expect many soldiers will rebel.
The Navy is currently blowing up random boats in the Caribbean (including double taps on survivors) because reasons.
Sure, and from what I hear that's at the level of "war crimes", but those civilians the US armed forces are killing aren't US civilians.
People sign up for a variety of reasons; to keep their own safe is one of them, and that reason is incompatible with being the aggressor in a civil war.
Bro the way you brush off the US military already moving into the 'murderous war crimes' phase and thinking there is an upper bounds of the direction already in motion.
Did you think you would ever so casually brush off the US Navy straight murdering people with 'sure, we're doing that but...'?
Edit: A large group of Federal agents just murdered a 37 something American on the street, on video. He had a permit to carry, and his largest crime appears to have been traffic tickets. Prior to shooting him to death they were video'd pistol whipping his face.
These people are just fine with murdering Americans.
> Did you think you would ever so casually brush off the US Navy straight murdering people with 'sure, we're doing that but...'?
As I'm not American, I was already in the set of people they'd be willing to kill when ordered.
Are *the military* more likely to kill other Americans today? I do not think so.
But as I'm not American, I'm more worried that the chance of a B83 heading my way has gone from "No way!" to "3%".
> A large group of Federal agents just murdered a 37 something American on the street, on video. He had a permit to carry
There was a kid a few years back, killed for a toy in an open-carry state.
My country of birth is not, contrary to what some claim, envious of the 2nd amendment; rather, it is glad to ban firearms. Even so, we see the hypocricy of killing those who exercise their rights.
Americans harassed my mom for wearing a mask during COVID when she was going through cancer treatment. They would rather she just died than 1. They wear masks 2. Be made to feel bad they didn't care about her dying.
The grocery store she shopped at literally had to setup special hours people like my mom could shop without being harassed and pushed to tears. She died knowing most of her community didn't care if she died if it inconvenienced them. 1 million Americans died and today they say 'COVID wasn't a thing'. 1 million Americans died and they say it's nothing.
Americans don't care who dies. They/we are fucking trash now. My grandfathers' generation were good people but whoever we are now, we are so lost. I grew up on Star Trek TNG American ideals and grew up Catholic and believing in the 'be kind' parts and thought my neighbors shared that but they don't.
0 of them will “rebel”
They went along with Iraq despite knowing it was a lie.
"We knew they didn't have weapons of mass destruction when we rolled up and didn't immediately get gassed"
Army goes along with anyone that ensures continual financing of the army. Review history of any putsch ever.
The current US administration is not competent to ensure continual financing in real terms.
If the White House keeps up current threats against allies it may find nobody willing to lend them money, and therefore the government will be forced to inflate its way to balancing the books each year; if they follow through with kicking out the undocumented migrant workers (even if they improve their current behaviour and limit themselves to *only* undocumented migrant workers), they mess up US agriculture at the same time; there is also visible corruption and self-dealing within the government.
The question is the level, rather than the existence of these factors.
There's been another authoritarian in my lifetime who messed with farms by actually kicking out non-native people in the way Trump threatens, demonstrating even worse corruption, and that actually did try to fund the government with inflation rather than my hypothetical of "will be forced to": Mugabe. It didn't go well for Zimbabwe, and the US military can observe what happened there and decide if that's what they want to see in the US.
You really think the US government can bomb its own citizens with impunity and not completely destroy their own industrial base that makes bombing citizens possible? The US government would very quickly collapse.
Refineries and factories don't work without people and are exceedingly vulnerable to locals.
Fear makes a lot of well intended people comply.
At the moment the government with 15% hardcore support is rounding up people on the streets en masse, violating decades of established practices, while harming industrial base that depend on work of those people. And somehow pretty much everyone peacefully goes along with it. Or get occasionally shot.
That is exactly the point. It's working because everyone is peacefully going along with it. They have the consent - or at least acquiescence - of the governed. That's why they have no issues.
It is, therefore, not remotely relevant to your post starting this whole thread off saying that the consent of the governed is irrelevant and all you need is tanks.
> They have the consent - or at least acquiescence - of the governed.
They don't have the consent. And all they needed to get acquiescence was a bunch of poorly trained goons with masks, weapons, suv-s and official mandate. Not a single tank was needed yet.
Consent is irrelevant.
The only saving grace is that actual people with tanks (ie military) might at some point say 'nah'. Which I think they did in case of Greenland. Simply because it was too weird for them as opposed to Venezuela and Iran.
GP is implying if you aren't committing terrorism, you support the regime. Which is... certainly an opinion.
And? Minnesota is under strike right now and Arizona's AG just told its citizens that they can legally shoot ICE if they don't properly identify themselves or have a warrant or legal cause to arrest them. Still 95% of the nation is operating as normal, but that isn't possible when people are being actively bombed.
You can't imagine 95% of the nation operating as normal when they see in the news that another armed domestic terrorist cell got bombed every few days while being told the country is safer now?
The US government has made it pretty clear that we're two countries. There's the USA, and "democratic-controlled cesspools". Dropping a bomb on Chicago isn't that nuts when you don't think of Chicago as part of your country.
Jan 6th worked, and they didn't even successfully take and hold the Capitol.
So imagine you attend a planned protest at the state capitol.
You drive and when within 3 miles your car dies.
You can start it again and drive away, turning around and leaving, but if you go further towards the capitol it dies again.
The next day the press reports that the planned protest was very sparsely attended.
Do protests have parking?
Our local municipality has (in the distant past) made all of the business park on-street parking into "no parking" zones. They also heavily enforce parking regulations in the area during actions...
Cities have parking. And passengers can exit a car without the driver.
Bicycles do not have software to install a kill switch. They do not have license plates to be read by surveillance cameras. They do not require costly insurance to legally ride. They are not powered by fossil fuels. Buy a bike. Learn to maintain it. Advocate for safe biking infrastructure in your area.
Sure, buy a bike. AND buy an older (but maintainable) vehicle for hauling, transporting multiple people, and traveling long distances. It’s not either or.
Entirely this.
I have a wonderful cargo bike (urban arrow - splurge purchase for my 35th birthday and second kid) - I use it for most in-city transportation tasks, including picking up kids from daycare/school, groceries, trips to restaurants, etc.
I also have a 2011 truck with ~200k miles on it. It's well take care of, and shows no signs of stopping any time soon. It hauls stuff from home improvement stores, help family move, and takes us on vacation.
I've been debating getting bumper stickers for each of them along the lines of:
"My other ebike is a truck" - for the bike
and
"My other truck is an ebike" - for the truck
I wish I had the use for a cargo bike. They're so cool.
I had such an older vehicle until a couple weeks ago when the fuel tank supports rusted to the point the tank wasn't supported. There was just more maintenance needed than I had time to do - it would cost about what I paid for a modern 3 year old vehicle just to get it running and who knows what it will need next year from parts I wouldn't replace. (the new car is also electric so much cheaper to drive, though it doesn't have the capacity of the 1 ton truck it replaced so I'm stuck when I need that)
Just be aware that newer vehicles often have more things that can and will fail, and parts seem less standardized these days, so you may not be able to keep it running past the expected service lifetime.
Older vehicles (depending on the platform) often use common parts that are shared even across manufacturers. And third party manufacturers keep cranking out new stock for them.
I am hoping that this type of system develops for simple no-frills electric vehicles over time. Although laws like the one mentioned here keep piling up, increasing vehicle complexity and cost of maintenance.
Parts were mostly never standardized. The difference is when a production run ends they would sell all the tooling to a third party that makes parts under their own name. (and even before production ends parts that break often are worth duplicating). With computers when the production run of the LCD, CPU, ... ends nobody is making more. Even if you could get the software to install, nobody makes the computer at all at any price.
Fair, standardized probably isn’t the right term. Maybe common usage is a better term? I saw a video where someone was modifying a Dodge Viper and found that it used a Ford branded control switch or relay, not even the same company! Although that is a bit of an outlier.
Relays were standardized.
Other parts were sourced from outside suppliers, which also supplied the same or similar parts to other automakers. Some of them were direct replacements, some were easily modified to work, and some could be robbed for components to refurbish your old part.
I know someone that installed an aftermarket touch screen in their Cadillac.
The OEM part arguably has a flaw where it dies when it gets too hot (Cadillac didn't do a recall though).
I think there were more than one third party options.
Bicycles are also not a viable replacement for almost all the uses of a vehicle. None of this advice is useful.
Transportation influences urban development. That is why most houses have a garage. There is no such thing as private transport (streets are public). Transportation has been heavily centralized since the New Deal. The bicycle was okay for most people living in cities in the 30s, now it is not because the government has favored the car infrastructure over the last decades. I think we need to start with not letting government develop their big infrastructure projects which are not resilient. Advocating for the use of bicycles might make sense in some places yet bicycle infrastructure is required.
Where I live there is plenty of bike infrastructure. I and many others don't use bike for transportation because of crime. Homeless steal bikes and parts of bikes if they cannot defeat the lock somehow. Recently a cyclists got killed in a "bike-jacking". People even get bikes stolen from their balconies on the 2nd floor. Reign in crime if you want people to use bikes more.
By “plenty of bike infrastructure” do you mean gutter lanes for bikes or proper, separated, useful and safe bike infrastructure?
I don't know what you mean by proper, but there are bike lanes, often separated with curbs or bollards going everywhere.
This is true. But it does not negate the comment you are replying to. Once you introduce kids into the mix (esp infants) - this whole narrative falls apart quite quick, ditto for elders/people with disabilities. Bikes, public transport are not a substitute for the vehicle.
I do agree that the vehicle should not be the default transportation even if I do consider myself a "car guy".
No, it does not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSGx3HSjKDo
Car centrism TAKES AWAY independence of kids, elderly, and disabled people.
> the government has favored the car infrastructure over the last decades
It was a combination of federal push for highways and consumer demand for greater distance and easier travel.
Also, federal highways are partially a national security issue, and are designed for quickly moving military equipment across otherwise isolated areas. Guidelines for federal interstates are specified jointly with the DoD to ensure that military transport can fit under bridges, and that bridges can support their weight. Industry is the other most important user, while individual consumers/families are the least considered users.
Everyone always assumes that individual choices and consumer behavior drives this stuff, and then they wonder why nothing changes even though we all started using reusable tote bags and LED bulbs. Stop blaming the consumer!
(The DoD is the largest institutional polluter in the world, by the way.)
That is very interesting. It is funny to see how influential the federal government has been on society, infrastructure and other areas of life. Specially considering that some people opposed to it during the confederation period because they saw it as another centralized authority (anti-federalist papers).
trains are pretty good at that too I hear
Trains are cheaper per mile but are less flexible and easier to sabotage. They are also important but there’s a reason that every country with a powerful military maintains both options.
I dunno, I live in what most people would call peak Suburbia and have all sorts of bike trails I didn’t even know existed until I got the electric assisted bike, I can range 5 miles away from my house in any direction without having to be on any major roads, and have a trailer for doing grocery shopping. I went 15 miles away and back one time but took quite awhile. All the grocery stores I frequent are within this range. When it’s warm out, I use my bike for probably 90% of my trips out of the house.
Your situation is very much the exception and not the norm in most of the US, suburban or not.
The exception is that he uses those bike lanes for shopping, not just exercise. Every suburb has plenty of great biking space (the streets are not busy!), but nobody thinks to try to use them that way.
Beg to differ, they're viable for basically all local use cases...
Groceries? Yep. School? Yep. Commuting? Yep. Etc.
They aren't viable for hauling multi-ton loads, or covering long distances, that's about it.
> that's about it.
Avid cyclist here.
* Extreme Weather: Severe heat, heavy snow, or torrential rain can make biking unsafe or impractical without specialized gear and high physical endurance.
* Accessibility & Mobility Issues: Individuals with certain physical disabilities or chronic health conditions may find traditional cycling impossible. (This also affects an aging population.)
* Time Constraints: For those with "trip-chaining" needs (e.g., daycare drop-off → work → grocery store → gym), the extra time required for cycling can be prohibitive.
* Infrastructure: Older adults are more sensitive to "heavy traffic" and "lack of safe places." Seniors don't stop cycling because they can't do it, but because they don't feel safe in traffic. (Good argument for upgrading roadways.)
* Care-giving: When parents become dependent on their children, often the children need to shuttle their parents around. A parent with dementia who escaped into the neighbourhood can be rapidly collected and ushered home in a car, not so much a bike.
* Theft & Vandalism: I've never had a car stolen. Two locked bikes, on the other hand...
There is definitely something to be said about bike theft. People see cars as a private space with serious social repercussions for violating. Bikes on the other hand are treated like normal belongings. This may have something to do with car-centric bike hatred and possibly the reflexive/reactionary tendency to completely dismiss the utility of bikes for transit. We have laws dedicated to the theft of cars, largely due to the fact the theft removes people’s mode of transport. Why not have the same for theft of other modes of transportation?
Additionally, I personally would have less issue with people driving due to a lack of physical fitness if they didn’t tend to 1. Drive recklessly and fast (35 on a 25 is not okay) and 2. Drive tank-like SUVs and Trucks
Severe heat, heavy snow, or torrential rain can make driving a car unsafe as well. Individuals with certain disabilities, chronic health conditions, or a plethora of age may also find driving impossible. For those with "trip-chaining" needs, extra time required for parking cars can be prohibitive. Old people don't like traffic and can escape and run away so fast you have to drive them back? And you're seriously including the idea that car theft is not a concern? These are some tortured arguments.
The correct argument here is "if bicycles become the dominant transportation mode, then the government will absolutely mandate kill switches for them too." "Bicycles don't have software" hasn't been true for years. E-bikes and wireless deraillers have been around a long time.
Bikes without software will be around for the foreseeable future. They're the cheapest and most plentiful version of bike. In the unlikely scenario that all bikes somehow become electric, old bikes are much easier to maintain than old cars.
My argument to my own post is that cameras that track cars and license plates could easily be reconfigured to track bikes and pedestrians. In that case there's no transportation mode that will save you from surveillance. The cameras have to go.
You do get the idea though, that just because bikes work for what you need to do, they won't necessarily work for what any other given person needs to do, right?
Also, why the hell have you got wireless derailleurs? What is the point? What possible advantage can they have over perfectly normal mechanical ones?
Not in Texas, they're not viable for most uses, the parent commenter is completely correct.
The same is true for many states in the US, perhaps even most of the US.
Agree. Texas is pretty bad. In most places you cannot exist without a car. No wonder Mcallen is the most obese city the US.
Hence the last sentence of my post:
> Advocate for safe biking infrastructure in your area.
We built dangerous highways. We can build bikeways as well.
Depends on where you live. I live in the sticks. 2 hour rides to the store on a windy road isn't really viable.
Moreover, time is a limited resource. Even adding 15 minutes here and there take away time I would have to spend with family, work on a project, etc.
Exactly. I love bikes and live near a grocery store, but unfortunately getting to that store (or anywhere really) requires a few minutes of travel on a dangerously busy highway. It’s not safe to bike that road regularly.
I once lived somewhere that was half an hour from the store by car. Thankfully that isn’t the case anymore.
My in-laws live in a place like that. It's a gorgeous property but day to day errands are a challenge. I also fear the day one of them needs immediate medical care. The nearest urgent care is 20 minutes away and the nearest ER is at least 45 minutes away.
Almost all? I think most car trips could have been bike trips.
This, from what I can recall seeing about average car trip distance, is actually correct.
(Excluding you rural people, but depending on your city could be true if people had smaller lots and denser less car centric business areas, or more businesses in general)
What?
A vehicle (presumably a car, since bikes are vehicles too) gets you and your stuff from point A to point B. Bikes do that too, though at a smaller scale.
If your commute or your errands aren't excessively long or require the use of a controlled-access highway, a bike's a perfectly fine alternative. The limiting factors are seasonal road or bike path maintenance and the discipline of other road users.
A city near me (Davis, CA) requires all bicycles to have a license and can confiscate unlicensed bicycles.
As of 2023 municipalities and counties can no longer mandate bicycle registration. (See https://law.justia.com/codes/california/code-veh/division-16... as amended by sec. 7 at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...) Though universities, like UC Davis, might still be able to require it for bikes on campus.
I hadn't heard of the requirement before. Mandatory registration originally seems to have been intended to address bike theft. All bicycles sold in California must have a serial number. A significant number of cities (most?) had ordinances requiring registration. But few people knew about it and even fewer registered their bikes.
I'm puzzled why there is so little emphasis on prioritizing bikes and other means of non-licensed transport among libertarians. Driving consents you to various things like forced ID checks, drug tests, and sometimes searches, and cars are relatively easy to track down compared to humans. In effect, car-centrism reduces civil liberties as it necessitates licensing for participating in society. And no, privatizing everything will not improve it. It will just make it worse since you'd be forced to allow insurance companies to track you to be allowed into private roads, etc.
The existence of a kill switch plus tracking in legislation very likely means the manufacturers wanted to track and sell user data and needed a scapegoat to avoid customer backlash. I would profoundly surprised if we don't find a lobbyist at the bottom of this.
I think the bigger incentive was repos, but this was considered a side-benefit.
Imagine driving in a remote road on a cold night, no cell signal, a deer crosses the road and you swerve to avoid it. The car thinks your drunk and kills the car.
You're stuck, no cell signal, good chance of hypothermia.
A bigger, real-world problem is that cars with lane-keeping assist will steer you back towards the deer.
Some of the earlier EVs I tried had lane-keeping assist so brutal that it was like trying to steer a car with a broken power steering pump belt, if it didn't want you to change lanes - genuinely dangerous.
The Kia EV I tried a few weeks ago just felt like it was tramlining a bit when I changed lanes without indicating (no real need to indicate, on a completely empty road).
I was visiting my parent's home recently and driving their new car. Was driving down a road and there was some debris in my lane, so I started to steer to the outside of the lane to avoid hitting it, and the car decided to apply counter steering input to keep me in my lane, pushing me back towards the debris, ignoring my commanded steering input. The fact that stuff like this exists and is common now and is wildly accepted is absolutely insane to me.
I have heard stories in Minneapolis about ICE remotely unlocking cars and opening windows. This seems technically possible to me. It makes me worry about public safety if the government has this control. I imagine a future where the government disables cars based on a score in a Palantir database. We need the right to use a car to escape danger. I also think encryption is important for defense against tyranny. The Second Amendment should protect encryption too.
Ha! The government still classifies encryption as a munition, which means you have a constitutional right to own it. Nice!
The devil is in the details. The democrats for this (that didn't vote for this) need to change the existing law so it has strong privacy requirements. Right now the law is that regulations must be created - but what those regulations are is up to whatever bureaucrat decides to make them: they could be good or bad.
The debate: https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-172/iss...
> A Republican attempt to cut off federal funding tied to vehicle “kill switch” enforcement failed in the House this week, leaving intact a law directing the Department of Transportation to develop mandatory impaired-driving prevention systems in new vehicles.
Apparently on the basis that it makes no sense to have a law mandating something and then another law prohibiting any money being spent on that thing.
https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-172/iss...
Very gross, overstepping, and creepy.
Maybe we should pass laws to ban driving. Then nobody will get hurt!
I'd prefer something with a slightly more libertarian bent:
The hardware is required in new cars. It's illegal to make it report false values or for someone other than the driver to record. When you press the start button, an LED shines into your skin and records fingerprint hash, and blood alcohol. This data is recorded/reported only when a public road has been entered or crossed, and erased from local storage in 24 hours.
The reporting is optional. You can turn it off. You set it up to report to your insurance company. If you don't, your insurance rates will probably rise.
What does society get out of this? People are strongly encouraged not to drink and drive. They get a clear and unambiguous signal if they are over the legal limit or not. We get some insurance data about how many people are drinking and driving nonetheless, and their actual accident rates. Insurance rates can be higher for people at higher risk, and lower for those who are not. There's no emergency situation where someone can't activate their car. Drivers' "freedom" to drive without insurance or without historical monitoring isn't infringed. You can still drive drunk on private property without consequence.
We could probably also partially do away with constructive DUI (DUI where you are drunk, but asleep in the vehicle and in possession of the keys). You can set a maximum startup BAC in the car computer. You can lower it, effective in 8 hours. Your sober self can agree that future you shouldn't drive drunk, and even if you sleep in your car, the police can't show that you were in control of the vehicle.
Wouldn't it have to be opt-in, and opt-in to buy, to be libertarian?
I wouldn't describe myself as libertarian. To make a libertarian strawman, such a strawman might claim that all safety features in cars ought to be provided by the free market. Of course, the predictable outcome is that most people won't prioritize safety in cars, so cars that spend their production budget on non-safety features will outsell those that spend on safety features, leading to at best a niche market for safety cars.
So no, I don't think any libertarian is OK with being forced to do almost anything, in principle. The very idea that you'd need to wear seatbelts or have a license or be compelled to have insurance or not have an open bottle of vodka in your cup holder is anathema. The free market should simply operate through the courts and put those that can't drink responsibly and cover the damage they cause into debtors prisons, to continue the strawman.
I would actually prefer much stricter enforcement of insurance and licensing laws, akin to say, the UK or Germany. I don't think you need hardware interlocks to do it, but you would have to have police willing to actually pull over people with fake license plates or missing insurance. That is not the case in much of California.
In my car, I regularly get a notice that I'm not being attentive and that I should go for a coffee break. It's never right and my best guess is that it's always on a straight highway road for more than 15 minutes where I'm not moving the wheel very much. I don't think this kill switch is a good idea and might attract unnecessary attention from law enforcement who might ding me for something completely unrelated (going 6mph above speed limit).
My Japanese coworker's Japanese car consistently insists my coworker is asleep.
I think it's hilarious because presumably someone in an office somewhere in Japan was told it wasn't working on white people and said "you want it to work on white people, fine I'll crank it to 11." But I also didn't spend $50k on it so that probably makes it easier.
These people are truly worse than the novel 1984 predicted. They will stop at nothing short of slavery. They must be our master at any and all costs. This is a war on freedom and the enemy is from within.