Repairing Auto

It looks like the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration’s  pushing of a requirement that all new vehicles be manufactured with the automotive version of a Flight Data Recorder is working. Both the House and Senate have provisions in their Motor Vehicle Safety Acts that call for a vehicle “black box” that will record and save everything that happens in your vehicle. Of course the stated claim, and probably the truth, is that the data culled from these boxes would provide invaluable info the carmakers can use to make vehicles safer in the event of a collision. That’s great, but if every vehicle sports one of these devices, how long do you think it will take for the courts to start subpoening the information for use in criminal cases? They already call in the data when it’s available — remember the recent Prius unintended acceleration fraud? In the end, it’s probably not a big deal, but I happen to think that even the smallest intrusion into our privacy is one more step toward living entirely under the eye of Big Brother.