This is how car brands have been involved in cases of domestic violence

After almost 10 years of marriage, Christine Dowdall couldn't take it anymore. A fight with her husband turned violent in September 2022, and Dowdall fled the couple's home in Covington, Louisiana, driving his Mercedes-Benz C300 sedan to her daughter's home five hours away. . Two days later, she filed a domestic abuse complaint with police.

Her husband called her repeatedly, she said, first begging her to come back and then threatening her. She stopped responding, she said, even though he texted and called her hundreds of times.

Dowdall, 59, occasionally began seeing a strange new message on the screen of his Mercedes, about a location service called “mbrace.” He took a photo and searched the name online.

“I realized, Oh my God, he's tracking me,” she said.

“Mbrace” was part of “Mercedes me” — a set of connected car services, accessible via a smartphone app. One night when she visited a friend's house, her husband sent the man a message with a thumbs-up emoji. A nearby camera captured his car driving through the area, said the detective who worked on his case.

Dowdall repeatedly called Mercedes customer service to try to remove her husband's digital access to the car, but it was in his name. Although she was making the payments, had a restraining order against him, and had been granted exclusive use of the car during the divorce proceedings, Mercedes representatives told her that her husband was the client, so he could retain your access. And there was no button to remove the app's connection to the vehicle.

A Mercedes-Benz spokeswoman said the company did not comment on “individual customer matters.”

Smartphone apps allow car owners to check the location of a vehicle; removing and locking the vehicle; and turn it on or off, among other tasks.

Domestic violence experts say these convenience features are being used as a weapon in abusive relationships and that automakers have been unwilling to help victims. This is particularly complicated when the victim is a co-owner of the car or is not listed on the registration card. Detective Kelly Downey of the Bossier Parish Sheriff's Office in Louisiana, who investigated Dowdall's husband for harassment, also contacted Mercedes more than a dozen times without success, she said. She had previously handled another case of harassment via a connected car app and was unable to get Mercedes to turn off her husband's access. The victim sold her car.

Mercedes also did not respond to a search warrant, Downey said. He rather found evidence that her husband was using the Mercedes Me app by obtaining logs of her Internet activity.

Dowdall took his car to an independent mechanic and paid $400 to disable remote tracking. “Car manufacturers should give them the ability to turn off this tracking,” said Dowdall, whose husband committed suicide in November.

A San Francisco man used his remote access to the Tesla Modelaccording to a lawsuit she filed anonymously in San Francisco Superior Court in 2020.

In the legal complaint against her husband and Tesla, she said that she arrived at her car on hot days and found the heating on, while on cold days the air conditioning was activated. Her husband, she said in court documents, used the Tesla's location search function to identify her new residence.

The woman, who obtained a restraining order against her husband, contacted Tesla multiple times to have her husband's access revoked, but was unsuccessful.

A judge dismissed Tesla from the case, saying it would be “onerous” to expect automakers to determine which claims of app abuse were legitimate.

Katie Ray-Jones, executive director of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, said she encourages people in relationships to have equal access to the technologies used to monitor their homes, belongings and cars.

“For a victim, having access to a car is a lifesaver. No victim should have to choose between being harassed by the car or not having a car,” added Adam Dodge, former family law attorney turned digital safety trainer.

By: KASHMIR HILL