Ford’s MyKey System: The Rise Of The Mom Culture
By Eric Peters, Automotive Columnist
Yesterday’s tyrannies came to us in the name of the people – or the race or the nation. We may get ours in the name of the children.
At least, when it comes to our cars and what we’re allowed to do with them.
Ford has just revealed a new system it will include as standard equipment on many of its 2010 model vehicles — and eventually, all of them. The new system — called “MyKey” — is described as a tool for parents of teenaged drivers. It lets Mom or Dad electronically limit the vehicle’s speed via a programmable key fob to no more than 80 mph. But that’s not all folks. The system can be set up to trigger an annoying buzzer if the teen doesn’t buckle up for safety — or exceeds any preset speed — and even limits the volume of the stereo (ok, maybe this last item’s not such a bad idea).
“Our message to parents is, hey, we are providing you some conditions to give your new drivers that may allow you to feel a little more comfortable in giving them the car more often,” said Jim Buczkowski, Ford’s director of electronic and electrical systems engineering.
But the speed limiter thing is creepy — because you just know it will not end with “the children.” It may start with them — just as mandatory seat belt laws began with them. But eventually, the same inexorable logic will be applied to everyone.
Who, after all, needs to drive faster than 80 mph? It’s illegal speeding! And speeding, as we all have been taught to pretend to agree, is unsafe. Why, therefore, should the possibility of speeding be permitted when technology can keep us safe?
If Ford does it, bet your bippie GM will, too. Automakers have fully embraced what you might call Mom Culture — each trying to outdo the others as providers of the “safest” cars on the road. Style, sex appeal and power used to sell cars. Not so much today. The most popular cars on the road are S-moo-Vees and family friendly “crossovers” that are just minivans in drag. Most new cars come standard with at least four air bags; some six or even eight. It adds thousands of dollars to the bottom line price, but all those moms out there demand it.
How long before the moms in the state and federal Politburo seize upon this new technology and make it mandatory? Not just that your next new car come equipped with it — but that either the automakers or the government pre-program the car so that it can never be driven faster than the posted limit?
With GPS technology, it is now possible to do this in “real time” — as the car travels. Leaving your driveway/neighborhood, a roadside transmitter sends a signal to your car’s computer, limiting the speed to the 25 mph maximum; once you turn onto the secondary road that leads to the highway — where the limit is 45 mph — the car receives new instructions and allows you to go that fast. But no faster. Enter the highway, and you’re allowed 55. That’s it. Wherever you go — and no matter how much horsepower you’re packing — you’ll go only as fast as The Man (or more accurately, Mom) says you may.
Ironically, the only hope this darkness may not descend is that it would cause a major cashflow problem for the local and state governments that depend so much on the “revenue” generated from our system of routine non-compliance with purposely under-posted speed limits. We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars; a bonanza not just for the various governments involved but also for the insurance cartels, who profit handsomely from the almost-unavoidable premium “surcharges” that come with a blotch on your DMV record for “speeding.”
But if speeding becomes impossible, radar traps — both manned and automated – become pointless. No money in it.
And that we cannot have.
So, it’s even money how this will come out. There’s a battle brewing between the safety fetish of millions of moms, the automakers who are desperate to please them — and the edifice of organized highway robbery that makes it possible to keep the money flowing into the government’s pockets from ours without the politically less palatable need to impose an overt tax.
Who will come out the victor? It’s a tough call. But of one thing there can be no doubt whatsoever.
You and I will lose.
Comments?
www.ericpetersautos.com
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For what it’s worth, the car limits the speed to 80mph, not 55. It signals a warning at a pre-determined speed (45,55,65mph). Parents have the right and responsibility, I think, to protect their children’s safety. If your father was in the car and you were driving, at 16, would he simply let you do anything as you please? Does anyone think you need to drive over 80 with the stereo turned all the way up and not wearing your seatbelt?
the “mom culture” is real and is way more dangerous to the future of this country than
you can imagine.it is spreading fast and far beyond traffic laws to all other aspects of our daily lives and politics.sadly,most Americans especially those who never had to live in countries where liberties and civil rights are being systematically stripped away under every false claim and ludcrious cause,are unable to even comprehend the size of the problem and they’re naively joining the “culturalization” orgy,completely blind
to the facts and falling under the spell of words like “safety”,”mothers”,”children”,
“victims” and other “magic” words that can easily strike a cord with a public whose consciousness has been shaped to embrace almost any feminized idea while rejecting logic and undermining intellect.this will not stop anytime soon and will only get worse.there are all kinds of groups out there who are fighting viciously for every
“cause” except for freedom!freedom needs fighters too.
Actually, I see greedy governments in the coming obamatopia using a system involving GPS and onboard computers that will record every place you exceeded the speed limit, and–when it’s time for your emissions inspection or license renewal or when you plug your battery mobile in to charge it–you will upload this info to the obamacracy and they will then charge you for every one of them.
Systems like GM’s On Spy will be used to record your conversations (already been done) and track your movements and possibly control your car.
But, as with smoking, they won’t want to prevent you from breaking the traffic laws–just make sure they collect as much as possible. (Maybe they’ll even prevent auto makers from offering systems to prevent you from speeding in the name of “privacy” or something.)
I can see this technology going mainstream. Then, slowly as the old vehicles on the road are replaced with the new ones that have this technology, the speeding ticket revenue will dry up. Immediately, local governments will use the police to “tax” the motorists some other way. Perhaps they will need to step up on red light ticket cameras and a variety of equipment violations through increased use of roadside “safety checkpoints.” At that point, they may realize that safety has not increased with the new slower mandated speeds, so then they may implement a speeding tax where you can voluntarily exceed the limit by some fixed amount, say 15 mph, by paying a nominal fee per mile.
Yeah it would definitely be a safety hazard and if it was ever implemented, someone would be able to hack into it.
But for reasons mentioned in the post. Speeding tickets fines will be no longer and we all know money talks. This is the reason we should know this will never be implemented. Don’t be scared your speeding fines are worth too much to be taken away with a techno gadget.
Eric are you the one who wrote this article and if so I am on your side. I think that the “Mykey” system might backfire when it comes to safety. For example if the speed limit for that road is 55 mph and the “MyKey” limits the vehicle to 55 mph max what happens when you need to go above the speed limit inorder to pass someone on a merge or in a emergency situation? Sometimes driving over the limit is needed. Wouldn’t this speed nanny cause so much problems since you can’t pass? What do you think? To me this “MyKey” is a safety hazard.
Unless such a system involves re-engineering the vehicle so that it is physically incapable of exceeding a preset speed, someone will undoubtedly find a way to override or “work around” the system. Thanks to the rapid dissemintaion of information via the internet, everyone who is interested would soon be able to defeat the system, making it a pointless waste of money.