Another reason to just buy a classic or youngtimer. Modern cars are meant for stalkers.
As you know, your loyal reporter is not necessarily the biggest fan of modern cars. Yes, there is still something nice for sale. But a lot of stuff is still interchangeable. Everything has the same modular three- or four-burner turbocharger under the hood, or is an EV. But perhaps even worse: everything has that very scary black box of the EU that keeps an eye on it. For a real liberal – nowadays I think you have to say classical liberal to avoid confusion with a woke liberal (the antithesis of liberal) – that is very scary. To such an extent that you actually do not understand that others do not see the danger, while at the same time the entire public space is covered with rubber paving stones to ensure that little boys do not climb trees and the like.
Now it is of course scary if you (and everyone) is monitored by a government. But it might be even more imminent if you are being monitored by a person. For example, your (ex) partner who keeps an eye on where you are via a login to your connected car. Some modern people now have apps for this that do it voluntarily. Even then, it personally gives me the creeps. But hey, everyone has slightly different perspectives. In some cases, however, it is quite obvious. And the car is therefore becoming an increasingly easier instrument to facilitate this.
Quality publication Carscoops reports on some recent cases of this. For example, Reuters reported in December about a Tesla Model X owner. This terrorized his better half by, among other things, turning the air conditioning to ice cold on cold days via remote access. And can be used on hot days. Or by honking the horn while the car was in the garage. Hilari…Uhm, very scary of course.
But even more slippery is the case of Christine Dowdall. She discovered that her now no longer desired partner was monitoring her location via the Mercedes Mbrace function in her Mercedes C300. In both cases it turned out that manufacturers were not keen to do anything about this themselves. And that there are circumstances that also make that difficult. After all, the car is often shared property. So yes, can you lock out an owner from using their property?
In the Tesla case, the judge ruled that this could not be the manufacturer's task in any case:
It would be onerous for an automaker to determine what activity was and wasn't abusive.
Judge, do not consider personal customer problems to be a manufacturer's problem
The manufacturer also did not cooperate in the case of the Mercedes. Although Christine Dowdall made the monthly payments, the car was registered in her partner's name. It had a better credit score so it was cheaper. But even after the judge had already ruled that her husband was no longer allowed to be near Dowdall and had granted her sole right over the car, the position of Das Haus unchanged. Dowdall has therefore done what everyone should do: dismantle the tracking software. Disadvantage: the system constantly gives an error message.
Anyway, if you don't plan to stalk someone and you don't want to be stalked by people or governments, then just buy an old animal. The safest, most reliable potential partner (m/f/i) in 2024 will soon be driving a dirty old car. After all, even if there were tracking electronics in there somehow, it would have stopped working a long time ago. Whose deed.
This article Modern cars prove ideal for creepy stalkers first appeared on Autoblog.nl.
#Modern #cars #ideal #creepy #stalkers
