I snipped the ad hominems and nasty words out for you.....but again comments like these won't win you any friends here. Just trying to help and offer some advice.

You will take your Motrin and you will love it!

That's great, because I take my advice on city living from Jane Goodall.

*shrug* this is why I only buy used cars that are from back when they actually used metal as a component. ehh, if things get too much worse just sell your house and take the cash to Mexico, then live on the beach for the rest of your life getting drunk and playing with hot Mexican chicks.

sorry girls, I'm not being sexist, it's just that if telemundo is to be taken as fact all the dudes in Mexico are either gay or look like Ron Jeremy (minus the "package") so you're gonna have to look elsewhere for equivalent eye candy.

How to make a thread about cars and government control turn into zombies while still keeping it about cars and government and zombies:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/550714

[Macho Man]Ohhh yeeeahhhh.[/Macho Man]

Quickclot. It saves your bacon.

The black boxes don't concern me, especially since various automakers have been using them for a while now. After the rigamarole Toyota went through when people forgot how to use a shift lever and a brake pedal, it's likely most, if not all, of them were headed that direction anyway. A $20 data recording device seems like a cheap way to avoid Senate hearings and a large drop in sales the next time three or four drivers all get stupid in the same manner within a week or two of each other.

What's bothersome is who will have access to the data, and for what reasons. After-the fact crash data analysis? Fine. Data dumps when pulled over for some "infraction"? Not fine at all. And even more troubling is that this is not going to go through the vote and veto process since it will be deemed a "regulation" instead of a "law", though these things pretty much carry the same legal weight. Never mind that the data collected from the devices we're forced to have by regulation might then be used to throw the law at you.

Probably, but there are a lot of grey areas for autos. Quite a bit easier to get away with a questionable search in a car than it is a house. For instance, get pulled over for suspicion of DUI. While you're going through your roadside test with Officer A, Officer B plugs in his little doohickey at the OBD2 port (or whatever it will use) and gets the data to check for.... whatever excuse they want to since you're under suspicion of DUI. Imagine that the regulation eventually gets updated so the device works with RFID. At that point, they wouldn't even need to gain internal access to the vehicle to get the data - the officer could perform an automatic scan simply by walking up to the vehicle.

But it all depends upon how the regulation is written, and what recording and acquisition requirements are mandated (say, 10 minutes instead of 10 seconds). The tinfoil-hat part of me sees the potential for major abuse. The law-abiding part says that if we don't break the laws then there's nothing to worry about.