Would you like the police to be able to stop your car by remote control?

Not an idea I would support.

I wouldn’t put anything past my government. Or criminals of any other description.

Talk about unreasonable seizure.

With the recent NSA spying scandal, it is simply insane to proceed with such a plan.
When america starts the World War 3, they not only will have full control over all defensive installations, no they will also be able to stop any civilians from escaping the cities when they attack with their nuclear missiles.

There are conspiracy theorists who claim that people are already being assassinated by hackers/governments/terrorists remotely accessing the computers in their cars and having them experience acceleration faults and brake failures.

A couple of hackers have demonstrated that it can be done.

I found an article referencing the alleged assassination by automobile cyber-attack that I was remembering from last year.

OBDIII was nixed for this very reason.

A ground-breaking way to general whiplash on the unsuspecting driver.

Sounds like it’d be really dangerous in practice – imagine being suddenly stopped on a highway! Gives me the willies. But it’d be very cool if they were able to stop crazy car chases. My fiance and I were run off a lonely stretch of the freeway between Denver and Colorado Springs one night by a guy speeding the wrong way, and then watched in amazement as a dozen cop cars hurtled over the hill just behind him.

edit:generate

Whenever politicians get into legislating technology, they run afoul of The Law of Unintended Consequences and/or do it in a ham-handed enough way for human/civil rights groups to get involved in a serious way. Ask Kevin Mitnick how well the law handles technology.

Granted, it is already possible to stop a car by frying the ECU with a small EMP burst, and police already do this, but the instant you add any sort of networked computers into the mix, you’re just asking for any malicious person with some computer skills to abuse it.

And just think of the fun that terrorists could have destroying the transportation infrastructure!

@wildpotato The stop isn’t sudden (unless they get fucktarded and tie it into the brakes). Its more of a coast-down as the engine dies, and since most non-Americans drive stick, it’s easy to get at least a couple of miles. I know they can because I’ve done it after my first Honda lost it’s distributor rotor at 60MPH. And then there was the time my buddy and I did 12 miles in neutral with the engine off….

Whaaaaaaaaaat! Never.

I wish they’d spend more time creating traffic flow, instead of traffic jams.

Only if the we’re pulling me over to give me fresh-baked-chocolate-chip-cookies.
Which never happens.

It could be useful in a car chase scenario but I would hate for someone to use it on me. Seems too easy for someone to abuse that kind of power.

Fuck the Police, As if they need any more of an upper hand on us?
However, it is pretty funny when they do it to bait cars and the person gets locked in the car they just stole.

@Juels Do you honestly think that once such a thing becomes possible, that police will be the only o es with that ability? The only reason you don’t see people frying cars now is that making and EMP generator is more hassle than it’s usually worth, but if you could do the same thing with just a few lines of code and a smartphone, the police abusing power would be the least of my worries.

@jerv I agree. I didn’t mention who would abuse it.

I’m married to a cop. I’m not worried about them.

The way I see it, if the vehicle is stopped remotely at the wrong time, the situation can go from something that was meant to be ended in a calm, quick and safe way, into a more dangerous, and complicated way.

Oh yes. Pleease save me from myself?? But hey, if I am not doing anything wrong, what do I have to be concerned about. right?

Isn’t that what they say

The road to hell is indeed paved with ‘good’ intentions. It would make sense for the police to have the ability to stop a car instead of risking endangering the public and themselves during a high speed chase.

Like with anything else though ideas like these tend to create a domino effect, and soon the authorities will be stopping cars for less than stellar reasons. I don’t like the potential for hacking either, as well as giving the authorties a potential tool to become corrupt in a more meaningful way.

I really do feel that our society is becoming much too dependent upon computers, and sooner or later we’re going to feel the full effects of this double edged sword if (or should I say when) something goes very wrong.

I like my car. It has a distributor and carburetor instead of electronic ignition and fuel injection. I see the people that really need to be stopped going old-school like I do. So, in addition to all of the other issues, it will also be more of a hassle to law-abiding citizens than to the truly criminal.