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Comment by keehun | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what would've happened if Tesla both had the ability to remotely shut the car down AND then shut it down in compliance with the police involved. Less people would be hurt, a synagogue would not have those damages, a whole lot of people with less stress.

Precedent from 2009 with OnStar: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/10/onstar-gp...

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Not sure why that is Tesla-specific, since most cars don't have this functionality anyway. The only reason why this article was even written is because it involved a Tesla, and readers love hearings stories about accidents involving Teslas.

Yea.... No.....

That is one of the reason I will not own a Car with OnStar, nor would I own a Telsa is they start doing that

Sure in this instance it may have saves lives but giving the government that kind of power is .... scary....

No, just no.....

What if it required a passcode you held?

It should really work off of an account (similar to how Apple ID works), where the owner can remotely shutdown a car.

I'm surprised it doesn't work like this.

and the government can call up Apple and have them do anything.....

So no is should not work like an Apple ID...... I do not want the government to even have the ability to access it is even with a court order. I do not want it to even be technically possible....

Ideally, I'd like to to be me and whoever I delegate it to. Again ideally, permitting N of K kinds of requirements.

I think at some point, this will be impractical and you will have to either commit digital suicide, or accept it. This is really sad, but I see it as inevitable. Governments will always have the power to pull this stuff off without our consent. If they can't get these things their way, then they will (or maybe already have) localized EMP charges that can disable targets. With the police force that is becoming increasingly militarized, I can see a car chase ending differently in the future. I don't support it, and yes we should do something about it. But what? Do the people really need to wait until it's at the brink?

Replace "localised EMP" with "HERF" and you're spot on.

Took me a while to figure out what HERF stood for, but eventually lead to this article on Wikipedia[0]

Yeah. 50s, 60s, and the 70s sounds like an amazing time.[1]

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon#Microwav...

[1]: Minus the wars.

i wonder if its safe to shut down or slow down a vehicle remotely because speed & approach judgements are best left to drivers of the vehicle unless of-course its remotely driven.

Probably dangerous, but probably safer than a high-speed chase.

Yes you are right , for the resultant set of safe times and coordinates to slow-down/shutdown should be algorithmic derivations; given fast computing and enough data-gathering.But am wondering if modern GPS remote mechanisms do these ?

It seems like you could probably do pretty well by 1) alerting the driver, and 2) gradually reducing the max speed.

What OnStar did is disable the gas pedal. Brakes still worked, and steering still worked. Imagine if you had run out of gas.

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