We Were Promised Flying Cars. We Got a Kill Switch.

Commentary

Those of us who grew up watching “The Jetsons” thought we had a very clear picture of where technology was taking us. George Jetson folded his spaceship into a briefcase. Jane pushed a button, and dinner appeared. Rosie the robot handled everything else. The future, as we were taught to believe it, was going to be frictionless, abundant, and free. Technology was the servant, and humans were in charge.

The car, in particular, carried that promise forward into the real world. Every decade brought something closer to the dream: power steering, cruise control, GPS navigation, self-parking systems, and cars that brake themselves before a collision. Each advance was framed the same way: more comfort, more safety, and more freedom—the open road, made more open.

And then something changed. Without fanfare and without a public debate, the direction was reversed. The technology that was supposed to serve us began to watch us. The car that was supposed to set us free began, piece by piece, to become, perhaps, the most intimate surveillance device most of us will ever own.

And in 2021, Congress made it the law with an enforcement deadline of September 2027.

Buried inside a trillion-dollar infrastructure package, Section 24220 of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law requires the Department of Transportation to mandate that every new passenger vehicle sold in the United States be equipped with Advanced Impaired Driving Prevention Technology.

The technology includes camera-based gaze tracking, eyelid-behavior analysis, head-pose monitoring, and steering-input pattern recognition. It is always on, always recording. And if the system concludes that you are impaired, it activates a kill switch. The car won’t move, and you are no longer in control of your vehicle.

The stated purpose is to prevent drunk driving, which kills 13,000 Americans every year. That is a genuine problem that deserves a genuine solution. But the solution being built goes considerably further than detecting a drunk driver.

This year, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced an amendment to defund the mandate. He told a hypothetical story, asking us to imagine a mother driving her children to the grocery store before a snowstorm: The roads are slick. She swerves to avoid a pothole. Then a neighbor’s dog runs into the street, and she swerves again. A first responder comes through with sirens, and she pulls over to let it pass. Her car’s artificial intelligence (AI) has been watching all of this. It issues a warning: One more erratic movement and the system will intervene.

Then she hits an icy patch and quickly corrects the wheel as any experienced driver would. But the AI judges her as unfit to drive. It activates the kill switch. The car stops. She is stranded on the side of a winter road with her children, in the snow. The algorithm in her car does not understand snowstorms or potholes or the difference between a driver who is drunk and a driver who is navigating winter roads with children in the back seat.

I have been that mother, but I was in a car that I could control.

Massie’s amendment to defund the mandate failed, 268–164. His post on X, “Your dashboard should not be judge, jury, and executioner,” was seen more than 4 million times. That viral moment is the primary reason most Americans are hearing about this at all.

While the federal mandate moves toward implementation, the automotive industry has been building the infrastructure of vehicle surveillance independent of any legal requirement. In 2023, Ford Motor Co. filed a patent describing a system that scans a driver’s face, fingerprints, and other biometric data from inside or near the vehicle and checks them against law enforcement databases in real time.

Smart Eye driver-monitoring software is already running in more than 4 million vehicles across hundreds of models. General Motors, Tesla, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Subaru, and Volvo all deploy versions of driver-facing behavioral monitoring.

Consider what the always-on cabin camera will capture: the argument that spills over from the kitchen into the front seat or the late-night drive taken when a person does not know what else to do.

Every frame becomes potential evidence. Lawyers will subpoena monitoring logs in accident litigation. Police will request the data at traffic stops. Insurance companies will require access as a condition of coverage.

The natural response is to keep an older vehicle, but older vehicles are being systematically removed from the road through emissions legislation, repair regulations, and parts supply constraints that make maintaining pre-surveillance cars progressively more expensive and difficult. The opt-out option is being closed at precisely the moment the surveillance is being installed.

The phone came into our hands, and it brought the algorithm with it. The algorithm came into our workplaces through productivity-monitoring software. Now it is coming into the car, which is the last space in which most Americans could feel free to go wherever they chose without anyone deciding whether they were fit to do so.

All 50 states already address drunk driving with ignition interlock devices—breathalyzers fitted after a DUI conviction that require a clean breath test before the engine starts. They work. In 34 states, they are mandatory for all DUI convictions—including first offenses.

The question before the public is not whether drunk driving should be stopped. Of course it should. The question is whether the solution to that problem requires placing a continuous behavioral monitoring system with kill-switch authority in every vehicle sold in the United States and whether that decision should have been made in a public debate rather than buried in a trillion-dollar bill.

We believed that we were being promised flying cars. We were promised more comfort, more convenience, and more freedom on the open road. What arrived instead was a federal mandate for a kill switch, a biometric checkpoint in your driveway, and a camera on your face for every mile you drive.

We are no longer imagining the cheery future portrayed in “The Jetsons.” Our future is still being decided, but only by people who know what is in it.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.