U.S. Gov. Plans to Track Location, Direction and Speed of all Drivers

Fact checked

The Department of Transportation announced last week that it plans on mandating “vehicle-to-vehicle communications”.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), part of the Department of Transportation, published an “advanced notice of proposed rulemaking” . The proposals in the document include:

“This document initiates rulemaking that would propose to create a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard, FMVSS No. 150, to require vehicle-to-vehicle communication capability for light vehicles”

“An integrated V2V system is connected to proprietary data busses and can provide highly accurate information using in-vehicle information to generate the Basic Safety Message,”

“…when a DSRC unit sends out a BSM, the BSM needs to: Contain the relevant elements and describe them accurately (e.g., vehicle speed; GPS position; vehicle heading; DSRC message ID, etc.).”

“However, because these same technologies are the building blocks for what may one day lead to a driverless vehicle, we have also begun research focused on safety principles that may apply to even higher levels of automation, such as driver behavior in the context of highly automated vehicle safety systems.”

Privacy groups have voiced concerns about the plans as data such as speed and direction of a car could get into the hands of the police and other agencies and breach the privacy rights of drivers.

However since the NHTSA announced its proposals it has stressed that intends to protect the privacy of U.S. drivers. We will keep you updated with this story as it develops.

Royce Christyn

Royce Christyn

Journalist at News Punch
Documentarian, Writer, Producer, Director, Author.
Royce Christyn

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