Build Back Bummer: Biden’s Humongous Spending Spree Includes a Kill Switch for Your Car

My first car was a clunker. But I lived in a bad neighborhood, so I installed a kill switch in my car. And it saved my car from being stolen once. (But I did have to pay to replace the broken window and the popped ignition.)

Silly me. When I read the headline here I thought they were talking about that kind of kill switch. I should have known it was more government over-reach.

Yeah my high tech kill switch was to pop the hood and take the ignition coil wire with me. For extra protection, take the rotor out as well.

Years later also used these security measures when in Haiti.

This item and hundreds more end up in these sneaky bills because the sheeple keep thinking and talking about what “democrats” do or think...

This is the same as referring to a stage #4 cancer as “indigestion”...

There are no “democrats” left... There are only marxists of the communist persuasion...

That is why we now live in the dark tyranny that we were warned about over the past 100 years and which the American people ignored...

There seem to be two choices: water the tree of liberty or shut up, bow dow, and obey...

Writing as a freedom loving victim of a repeat drunk driver, I've given some thought to this general issue. I was fine, my car was totaled, thanks to just enough warning to modify the impact and give my car's crash engineering a chance. B*ast*rd got his 2nd DUI, blowing a .343, out of it and was in the paper with his next one within 6 months. The current legal system will keep letting them out until they manage to kill somebody. He was driving someone else's car on a suspended license. A lot of good it did to take away his ~~gun~~ car and associated rights. The problem is not what is attached to the ~~trigger~~ wheel, but what is attached to the hand holding it. But the gun/car analogy only goes so far. Drunk proofing guns without ruining them for routine, much less for emergency use where milliseconds matter, is hard to imagine, but for cars it's conceivable.

Drunk proofing cars is an interesting intellectual exercise. Ignition interlocks with built in breathalyzers are complex, prone to failure, and are easily dodged by just driving a different vehicle. Mandating them for all new vehicles punishes the innocent with undeserved and expected failures and at best a significantly higher price tag. Ideally you want a system where the risks are disproportionately born by the guilty with minimal cost and risk for the innocent. Minimal does not herein mean zero. Keeping the status quo implies keeping higher insurance and repair costs and keeping the injuries the status quo allows drunk drivers to inflict. Cost benefit analysis should be possible and should be done before changing anything.

My starting point would be that someone with a suspended license shouldn't have their butt behind the steering wheel of a moving car. Seeing as such butts rarely arrive except when the car is already stopped, a stopped car shouldn't be allowed to start moving with such a butt behind its wheel. If the only restriction is such butts, and it is only enforced when starting to move then the car shouldn't fail from this in motion. If it's stuck in the wrong location any one with legit butt can move it. But how to validate butts. My answer would be to use a mature, widely available and I presume inexpensive, technology. Chip the sufficiently guilty butts and have driver's seat chip readers that can determine if such a chip is present over it, as opposed to in some other seat. Getting chipped to require due process and suitably written laws. I'm not aiming to guess at and chip future first offenders, but rather those repeaters the court deem won't comply with lesser measures. Based on the veterinary experience the medical risks are relatively small and the perp might be offered a suitable prison term as an alternative. Satisfy the court long enough and they might let you have it removed. While chipped the courts should require periodic chip checks to make sure it hasn't been illicitly removed. Paired with chipping this needs suitable chip reading systems installed in new cars. Given time most cars available to drunks will be equipped and the system would work. Now that requires the system to be both technologically feasible, cost effective (compared to the costs inflicted by drunks it can block) and otherwise relatively problem free. I'm guessing the answers to the last are ok, but am not expert. Perhaps experts can improve on my concept, but I'd caution against complicated systems. Small, simple, safe, and cheap would be my goals. The only thing complex would be the court's choice to chip or not to chip.

I have to tell you a couple of things: 1) You seem to have this well thought-out, and 2) Your “simple but effective” thought process is excellent. I’m an engineer, and those two things are key. Sounds like a good idea.

And, if the true intent was to stop drunk driving, that’s the kind of legislation that would be passed. But, even then, the kind of legislation that should ALREADY have been passed is a very severe penalty for driving drunk, the FIRST time, including mandatory prison for the second time, with no interference from a sympathetic judge. Grant appeals, perhaps, but only in extreme cases.

The closer to the real cause of a problem is, the better the solution. Unfortunately, prohibition is not an option. Hmmm... perhaps not sell liquor to those with a DUI...

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