this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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Fuck Cars

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A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I have a bicycle and use it more than my car but I still need a car and I don't want my car to also be a computer. There is no way a feature explicitly restricting your behavior is going to be designed in a way that respects your privacy, most new cars already store all data and phone home unaccountably, and they're obviously going to want to remotely upgrade where/what speeds are allowed in real time. Yeah there's license plate trackers and those suck too but they aren't always present everywhere or recording fine grain data to the same extent.

Until the people controlling the software can be trusted or the software/hardware is made entirely transparent IMO computers in cars beyond abs/transmission is bad and should be resisted.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They’re obviously going to want to remotely upgrade where/what speeds are allowed in real time

Thats a good point. I guess it would be a sacrifice to need to do an update every time the map changes. And probably cities will want to expand their slow zone and not want cars to speed. So an internet connection is probably necessary, at least to update the maps each time you turn on the car.

There is no way a feature explicitly restricting your behavior is going to be designed in a way that respects your privacy

I don't see why this would be the case. Either way, you can think of this feature as a smart override to a dumb speed governor. Therefore, the software exists to expand your behavior.

I don’t want my car to also be a computer

That is a big ask. Particularly given the fact that the market inexplicably wants their cars to be a computer. It seems to be the case that people who want their privacy respected need to sacrifice some conveniences. So you probably will either have to struggle to maintain an old car, do a lot of modifications to a new car, or not drive a car at all, if you want your privacy respected in the near future, regardless of whether speed governors become mandated.

Given that this is c/FuckCars, i'd recommend not driving a car at all. Perhaps a DIY ebike is a good car replacement.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I don’t see why this would be the case.

You acknowledge that an internet connection would be needed. There's no chance these companies willingly make their software open source and if they did it wouldn't help with the user adversarial goal of speed limiting so that's an extra reason not to. So you've got an unaccountable black box with free reign to connect to company servers from your car, how do you expect that to go?

i’d recommend not driving a car at all

Yes, great, I'd love to, please give me the public transportation infrastructure I would need to make that happen. In the meantime let's do the speed limiting low tech and outside of my car with bollards or whatever instead of making the experience of needing to drive even more hellish and dystopian.