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from Dan WaltersCalMatters
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Over the past two decades, cars have gradually evolved from mechanical devices to electronic platforms featuring computer screens and a host of other digital capabilities.
A few years ago, California Air Resources Board began requiring automakers to install devices in vehicles to record and store operating data that the agency can access to determine how well emissions-reduction programs are working.
This was one aspect of the state’s stated goal phasing out cars and trucks powered by gasoline and diesel fuel and replacing them with zero-emission vehicles.
The automotive industry objected to the data collection mandatearguing that it would infringe on the privacy of vehicle owners. At one point, the industry threatened to stop making cars for California.
The agency insisted it would not collect data involuntarily. But its regulation has fueled – pun intended – suspicions in some quarters that recording how and where cars are used will allow them to be tracked, just as mobile phone use can be tracked.
Or, some said, as gas and diesel use declined and gallonage taxes fell, the state could start charging drivers by the miles driven, based on their records.
While the data collection mandate was being implemented, another aspect of the situation emerged – concerns that the tracking software that helps drivers get help in emergencies such as General Motors’ OnStar systemcan be abused by abusive spouses to find and attack their partners.
Two years ago, the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom passed a law aimed at countering this potential abuse. Senate Bill 1394 required automakers to provide an Internet process by which a “connected vehicle service” can be quickly terminated. Those seeking termination will need to prove they own the vehicle or have it through a divorce decree or domestic violence restraining order.
That was the relatively easy part of SB 1384.
The more controversial part of the law requires new cars to be equipped with “a mechanism that can be used by a driver who is inside a vehicle to immediately disable access to the connected vehicle’s location.” The mechanism had to be “prominently located, easy to use, not require access to an online application, not require a password or login information, and only allow reactivation of access to the connected vehicle’s location by a driver who is inside the vehicle.”
The deadline to meet this requirement was last week. The industry insists that this is practically impossible to meet because it is a complex engineering problem that involves dozens of different car models and automakers would have to support existing electronic tools such as GPS navigation and utility services such as OnStar.
Without changing the mandate, industry lobbyists warned, automakers may be forced to stop sales in the state, repeating a threat they made earlier about the Air Resources Board’s data collection mandate.
It was something of a political standoff, while Senate Bill 719 emerged from behind-the-scenes negotiations late last month. Just one day before the deadline, Newsom signed the bill, which narrows the application of the requirement, eliminates a hard deadline for it and replaces a series of deadlines tied to model years and “technological feasibility.”
Thus, it is impossible to say for sure when, if ever, cars will be equipped with the ability to turn off location tracking software.
These two examples suggest that converting the car from a mechanical device to an electronic one has created a bottomless well of potential problems involving privacy, government regulation and the politically heated topic of how California will change the way it taxes motorists after gallonage taxes on fuel disappear, if at all.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.
