NTSB Wants Black Boxes in Passenger Vehicles

"There is no reason for data recorders in cars other than to use as evidence against a driver in an accident. Are these black boxes even accurate during a collision - where G forces and wheel slippage provide no absolute indication of what a car may really be doing during an emergency situation? Let alone equipped for the high sampling rates needed." ====================================

how about evidence to SUPPORT a DRIVER in an ACCIDENT.

YEAH, the person who hit me was speeding, driving erratically, and had a BA content of .18. and after looking at the red light camera, definitely drove through the red light.

Sometimes it would nice to see some support for the "victim"!

h

Many states require lawyers to give their fingerprints when they take the bar exam. That is probaably how they got that lawyers fingerprints and not from a driver's license. The story is worse than you realize.... it was a terrible match and in fact the FBI experts said that the fingerprint they found was so bad that it was unmatchable with any degree of reliability. Notwithstanding when they found a Arab in the US that kind of looked close they arrested him on no other factual basis whatsoever. He's sueing the FBI now.

Recently there was a Toyota story that Toyota refused warranty service because the computer said he redlined his engine. Well I know lots of software errors. Darn.... the electronic voting machines hardly work. And as the engine blew apart who knows what screwed up data the computer got.

No, not at all.

Rubbish. And it isn't evidence against drivers as much as it is evidence of what actually happened.

Let me guess, you are an advocate of removing black boxes from airplanes.

So, have you bothered to ever READ the 4th and 5th amendments?

No, not during a collision. But before one, yes. If someone smacks into another car it would be useful to know if they were speeding.

Modern computers, even cheap ones, can sample far quicker than what is needed.

Yes and no. A lot of this really depends on the court case.

Assume for example that driver A hits and kills a pedestrian. The driver argues that he was going the speed limit, and the pedestrian jumped out in front of him. Two witnesses to the accident state the driver was speeding and the pedestrian didn't jump out in front.

In this case the DA has no choice but to file charges of manslaughter and let the subsequent court case sort it out.

If the driver had a black box in the car, and was positive that he wasn't speeding, he would sign over his rights against self-incrimination and let the DA examine the black box. If the black box said that the driver wasn't speeding, the DA would know that even if he pressed manslaughter charges, he would lose the case, and so he wouldn't press charges, thus saving the driver a lot of grief, and the court system a lot of money.

If the driver had a black box in the car and WASN'T positive he was speeding, he would simply refuse to allow it to be searched. In that case the DA can still search it - and use the evidence to decide to file manslaughter charges - but the evidence wouldn't be admissible in the following trial, and the driver would have the same chance of getting off as without a black box. And if the DA were to mention it during trial, that would be an immediate mistrial and the DA could be disbarred.

OK let's give airplane pilots that right too.

The real issue though is this.

YOU do not own the streets that you drive on. ALL of us, you, I and everyone, own the streets. If I'm going to allow you to drive on the streets that I own, I'm going to make you have a data recorder that you can't shut off. My right to require you to have a data recorder is equal to your right to not have to have one. So where does that leave us?

Well, let me explain it. First, read the 5th amendment. To put it simply, a black box in a vehicle that YOU are driving is collecting evidence, AKA witness, on YOUR behalf. Legally it is exactly the same as if you were writing down all that data into a notebook that you have next to you, at very high speed. After all you own the black box, not the owners of the airplane.

In a court case, if I demand you hand over the black box data and you know for a fact that that black box data is incriminating against yourself, then your lawyer will call for a trial halt, demand the jury leave, and when they have filed out you can simply invoke the Fifth Amendment and that is the end of it. When the jury comes back the judge will simply state that the black box data is unavailable.

In fact if you had a really good lawyer, he might not even bother to do that, but simply say that we are sorry but there is no data available from the black box, then refuse to answer any further questions along those lines. Legally it would be correct for him to say that even though it would give the impression to the jury that the black box was smashed, which is a lie.

In any case, this kind of thing is generally handled pre-trial when each side requests evidence from the other.

Ted

What rules do the police follow at an accident scene?

What procedures are followed to insure that the "black box" is not commandeered, examined, and data extracted by police while the owners are unaware of what is happening to the remains of their vehicles? What can, and what can't, the police do to a vehicle that they impound?

If the police love to do one thing, its to lay charges. As many as they think they can prove - and even some they know they can't. Any new toy, gizmo, device, method, or power given to them will be used just for that purpose. Heat-sensitive cameras that they can point at houses to see if they're growing pot inside.

The law may treat you as innocent until proven guilty, but the police will always treat you as guilty and let the courts prove otherwise. The police will go to great lengths, even criminal or negligent lengths, to pursue you as a suspect if the initial evidence points to you.

From a black-box point of view, airplanes are different from cars for at least 3 reasons:

1) The vast majority of airplanes with a full set of data recorders are used in a commercial capacity to carry passengers or cargo. Private vehicles are, naturally, not used in a fee-for-transport capacity. The operator of a commercial vehicle does not necessarily have the expectation of privacy while on the job. 2) An incident (accident) with a car will almost always result in the complete recovery of all components of a car, and the relatively low speeds involved means that there is little chance of total disintegration of any critical component. Therefore complete analysis of the car's remains is almost always possible. The very opposite is almost always the case for a plane incident. There will also usually be no witnesses to a plane incident. 3) The data recorder on a plane serves a much different purpose than in a car. Cars incidents rarely result from structural or control systems failure. However, planes (and I mean your typical passenger jet) is much more vulnerable to those types of failure. It is critical to identify such a failure (frequently only possible from black-box data) in order to apply corrective measures to all similar aircraft operating world-wide.

If you want to compare the "validity" (or reasons) of using black box data recorders in cars with something already in place, then you must choose something other than a commercial vehicle being operated by paid employees.

For example, the gov't could "decree" that all watches sold in the USA starting next year must have data and proximity recording capability. That means your watch will record your blood pressure, heart rate, and proximity to other watches being worn by others in your vicinity. In the case of a crime, the data in your watch would either exonerate you or convict you. The extension of the data recording car to the data recording watch is not very large.

Was the pedestrian using a cross-walk or crossing at a intersection? Did the pedestrian have the right-of-way? The speed of the car will be the last factor to be examined (if indeed it ever would be).

Being hit by a car going the speed limit (30 mph) vs one that is speeding (45 mph) makes no difference. Someone has the right-of-way in that case, and someone violated it.

What exactly are the procedural rules for the handling of black-box data? Who can guarantee that some over-enthusiastic cop won't hook up a data terminal right to the computer's access port while it's still sitting at the accident scene? They do drive around with them, you know. They've gotten them from third-party manufacturers and even dealerships.

What's the difference between the streets, the sidewalks, the parks?

What's next - will pedestrians be required to wear data recorders too?

Streets, sidewalks, parks, etc, are public places. Vehicles operated in public places must conform to mechanical and operational (pollution control) standards. People that operate these vehicles must be licensed. Beyond that, you are really going to take a toll on individual's rights to privacy if you want to implement more surveillance and data recording systems.

50 years ago, we could be having this argument, and it would be theoretical because the technology wasn't there to implement this data recording form of surveillance.

Black box data recorders in private vehicles is probably the first implementation of what could be called obligatory personal surveillance. In 10 years, the technology will be here to provide a low-cost, low-interference way to keep a surveillance record on practically all forms of individual human activity. Where do you want it to end? Do you want it to end?

I don't have any problem with using technology to get to the truth. But indeed, there are insufficient safeguards to ensure that the blackboxes will be used in a manner to get to the truth.

Even if it tells your wife where you REALLY went last Saturday night? :-)

Matt

I live a pretty boring life. My wife was probably with me.

>

They cannot gather a scrap of evidence from an inpounded vehicle without a search warrant. And unless there is probable cause for a warrant to be issued, it won't be issued.

It sounds to me like you have never had a vehicle impounded. I have. Twice in fact. One it was impounded because I forgot to pay a speeding ticket and my license was administratively suspended. Yep, dumb on my part. Oh well. I got it back the next day. The second time was because someone had stolen it.

Both times the car went straight to an impound lot. No police searched the vehicle. In fact in the first instance the cop told me to make sure the car was locked before it was towed.

Cops know the law a lot better than you, apparently. Illegal search is about the quickest way to get a conviction tossed out that there is, and it always makes the investigating cop look bad in the eyes of the judiciary. Cops that do a lot of illegal searching end up being completely useless to the police force because the judges get to know who they are, and will rule against them without question. You really need to read up on the exclusionary rule.

They cannot use evidence so gathered to make an arrest or get a conviction unless they got a search warrant before pointing that camera. And they can't get a warrant unless there is probable cause. And in that pot case you are referring to the arrested person (who was growing pot, by the way) had his convictions tossed out for exactly this reason (illegal search)

The only exception is the 'plain view' doctrine - meaning that if a cop observes you committing a crime in plain view - ie: smoking marijuana, breaking a window, whatever - without the assistance of any electronic gizmo, then they don't need a search warrant. But the crime must be likely and imminent, and none of this fits an accident scenario when the cops show up afterwards.

Well, DUH! Where have you been that this is a surprise?

You still fail to see the difference between a police investigation and a conviction in a court. The police can do whatever they want but unless they do it legally, nothing they gather on you is worth shit towards getting a conviction. Why do you think that OJ Simpson got off?

Ding ding ding ding ding!! Hello!

This is EXACTLY why black box data recorded out of a car is different than black box data recorded from a plane! The operator of a private car DOES have expectation of privacy - which is why your doomsday scenarios of illegal searches are baloney. Why is it that you understand the difference between a black box in a plane and a car yet refuse to acknowledge the legality on them is different? What is wrong with you?!?

So what are you saying here - that because the black box doesen't disintegrate that we shouldn't put it in?

Yes, planes are more vulnerable and prone to structural and technical failure. But not even the majority of major jet accidents are due to this. Weather, bombing, pilots navigating wrong and flying into structures and into other planes, those other things are the majority.

You also might consider that BECAUSE we haven't have black boxes on cars, that structural and equipment failures in vehicles are going to be overlooked in many cases, thus skewing the results. Also, the crash results are extremely skewed because of drunk driving - which isn't going to be recorded as a structural failure.

No.

Wrong.

Absolutely false. If it is established in court that the driver was speeding then the standard for the driver having reckless disregard for the life of the victim will be met, which is a requirement for a manslaughter conviction. Also, the standard for committing a crime during the process of committing another crime will be met as well, which heaps further problems on the head of the driver. In that case the driver can argue all he wants that it was an accident - but his chances of showing that he had no culpability will be about zero. He's going to get convicted.

They can do that all they want, but if they do it without a warrant, they are going to ruin a convicion, because any data they get from it that incriminates a driver will be inadmissable.

I think you must have been watching too much Hollywood cop shows. In any accident that is serious (ie: fatality, serious injury, etc.) an accident investigator shows up. The regular cops aren't even allowed to touch anything.

Have you ever actually seen what happens during a serious auto accident where someone dies? Let me tell you for example how a recent one out here worked, out on US 26 in the sticks.

2 girls speeding in a Honda head-on a panel truck. Within the first few minutes the direct witnesses call the cops on a cell phone. 10 minutes later the cops come and start interviewing witnesses and cordoning off the site. 20 minutes later the ambulance gets there and the paramedics determine that the 2 girls are dead. For the next 2 hours nobody is permitted to touch anything, that means no witnesses, no family members, no cops. The 2 bodies remain out in the open where they lie, while the accident investigator gets there. Another 2 hours later he's finished and the bodies go off to the morgue. The panel truck drivers have general cuts and bruises but otherwise walk away.

During the entire time the local police officers have not been permitted by their own rules to touch anything whatsoever, until after the accident investigation is completed. The remains of the car are then towed to a holding area and are off-limits to anyone other than the accident investigators and the next-of-kin investigators. In this case as witnesses related the girls crossed the line, the panel truck if it had a black box the data recorded would be worthless insofar as determining where on the road the panel truck was, and the owners of the truck would quite obviously consent to access to the black box to limit their liability.

That is how it works in the real world.

Oh, so you regularly drive at high speeds on the sidewalks?

And people that operate these vehicles must follow all traffic laws. How conveniently you ignore this.

Why? Don't you understand that observational data in a situation like that is completely worthless unless a human is sitting there watching it?

So what, there are a lot of cameras. Where is the staff going to come from that is going to have to look at all that data? No states have the budgets to have this kind of staff. Hell they don't even have enough staff to screen the security checkpoints at the airports!!

Frankly I want more and more and more of it. Every time another camera goes in, it increases expotentially the number of staff required to keep track of it. Eventually you got so many cameras that it is impossible for any government agency to track it and the surveillance becomes completely worthless - unless a crime is committed and the survelliance has been stored, then you can go back and look at it, to see exactly how the crime worked. But, unless you know that a crime is being committed at a particular place and time, nobody is going to have to time to review all that survellience data to try to find crimes.

Here's a test for you, since you are so all fired up about survellience. Go buy yourself a small computer camera. Point it out the window at your street and set it up to run while you are at work. Now, come home and try to use the data you get from that camera to try and detect criminal activity or other objectional activity on your street. How many hours a day are you going to be spending reviewing that data to find crimes? And while your reviewing that data, yet more data is being recorded that your going to have to review later. Now let's add 5 more cameras and see how well you keep up.

What people like you don't seem to understand is that 1984 was a real crock of shit when it came to the bugs in people's rooms. If a government, totalitarian or not, wants to spy on it's citizens it does so by getting other citizens to do the spying work.

Nazi Germany knew this well. They didn't have all this high tech survelliance camera crap. What they did is simply control the media and propagandize the populace into doing their spying for them. And this is happening today. The Bush administration using propaganda convinced the American public that Moslems are evil, and now the FBI and police agencies are flooded with people turning in suspicious activity reports about anyone who is wearing a turban and a beard.

People like you play right into the governments hands. You go run out there and stir up the populace against survellience gadgets, which takes the attention away from the real breaches of individuals rights to privacy.

Sure, run a campaign to ban cameras and black boxes. While the masses are busy making them illegal - which is fine since they are useless for spying anyway - the government can work away at things like the exclusionary rule, due process, rights to speedy trial, and other things without the masses catching on to what they are doing.

Ted

What does and doesn't work is difficult to predict. A nearer example is the former GDR (communist East Germany). They collected huge amounts of info on the population through informers and the like, and many (most) people had a Stasi file. In the end they could not do much with it because there was too much, including recording where people went shopping and the like.

DAS

Your entire premise about police not necessarily having free and unfettered access to black-box car data is largely false.

What will stop cops from routinely making cursory (exagerated) observations of incidents or accident scenes and hence pretty much always getting search warrants whenever they ask for them?

This touches on the similar tactic of stopping someone for a driving infraction (real or trumped up) and then the cop calls a buddy with a K-9 unit who takes the dog for an innocent walk around the car. If the dog thinks he smells drugs, well then what do we have now? Illegal search without a warrant? Probable cause?

If cops make up reasons to get search warrants (to search cars or to get black box data) then there should be consequences to null discoveries just as there are consequences to positive discoveries (of drugs, of speeding prior to an accident).

There should be a negative consequence to a cop who discovers nothing based on a bogus search by his buddy's K-9 unit.

How many judges are going to put up with constant and unending requests from a cop for search warrants which end up never panning out? The current court system, which is really overloaded as it is, does not have time for this. Not to mention that you have to have suspicion/evidence of criminal activity to get a warrant in the first place, and speeding isn't a crime, it's an infraction. I don't think there are going to be many judges out there who are going to be issuing warrants to cops that want a warrant just so they can check the black box to see if someone's been speeding, when there are no injuries or fatalities in the accident. And if they do, then vote them out of office, these judges are elected, after all.

Sure, that happens. I won't deny this. Is this a bad thing? It is if your carrying drugs.

They still have to get a warrant. What usually happens is everyone sits cooling their heels until they get one.

I think if you bother to look you will find that cases of drug sniffing dogs indicating drugs when there aren't any, are pretty rare.

There is. While he's wasting time doing that, someone else with drugs is getting away with it.

What do you think happens to cops that spend their entire days calling out the K9 units and then coming back with nothing all of the time? Don't you think the K9 units have better things to do? Do you really think that their supervisors are going to continue to let them run these wild goose chases while other officers on the force who are actually doing their job, and are also calling in for those K9 units, and they are actually using them to find real drugs?

And, if there's a hint of race discrimination going on here, such as if you got a cop that only stops black people and always calls for k9 units for the people he has stopped, then the feds are going to come down hard on the department.

Ted

Based on experience, quite a few. In your own back yard, look at the Molalla cop who just now got recognized by the Clackamas DA as a bad actor; how long did that take?

When a rogue or lazy cop plus a compliant judge end up knocking your door down at oh-dark-thirty, who pays to fix the damage from the 'search'?

Who replaces the time lost? Who removes your frustration, makes it all better?

Better it is that this malfeasance doesn't occur in the first place. But, it does.

Nor does it often have time to police the police.

Isn't it incredibly difficult and expensive to mount a campaign to unseat an incumbent judge?

Uh, yeah. This is the same DA's office that employs Alfred French who swore on an affadavit that John Kerry was lying about his record - then admitted he was lying. The same French who had a sex affair with another employee in the office. The same one who the prior DA fired but who was rehired when the current DA won the election in 2000.

The citizens of Clackamas County elected the current DA, knowing that the prior DA didn't tolerate bullshit, and the current one that they elected in was a backscratching, old-boys-club machine politician. So I don't really have much sympathy for them. They quite obviously WANT corrupt police and DA's, they voted them in. Who are you to tell the rednecks-i-mean-citizens of that county that they can't have the corrupt cops that they obviously want to have?

The cops do. Lawyers love civil suits like this. The reason you generally never read about them is that the typical MO is the lawyer files a huge damage suit then the city and lawyer work an out of court settlement and the city never admits fault, but pays out a big chunk, and the plantiff has to sign a gag order to get the payment.

We have a friend in North Portland that had this happen, cops were chasing a thief and saw my friend in the kitchen at 1:00am, and charged in busting the back kitchen door with guns drawn. My friend was down on the floor in his underwear for about 10 minutes until his wife came in yelling what the f*ck were they doing.

The city had insurance adjusters out there the next day, (Saturday) and made it very clear that they did not want a lawsuit, and would pay anything needed to fixup the damage (within reason, of course)

This kind of thing happens so often that they don't even bother printing the stories in the news anymore, there's so many of them.

I got news for you, regardless of whether there's black boxes in cars this sort of malfeasance is going to happen.

And without a blackbox do you know how they estimate speed in a killer collision? By the so-called forensic science of measuring skid marks, amount of impact, etc. In short, educated guessing. And, they write tickets based on that. And, the guesses are almost always high because they want the tickets to be higher.

Another true story for you:

On Tuesday of this week I was talking to a customer, her son (16 years old) smashed the family van, a 2000 Honda Odssey, last Friday up in Washington State on some freeway exit. He came off the freeway exit and the exit curved, he couldn't take the curve and the van smacked into the cement wall. Not hard, just enough to dent the front fender and rear bumper. The van doors were fine. It was raining at the time.

Anyway, while this poor 16 year old is standing there staring at the side of the van probably saying "Oh shit", some 45 year old drunk driver came off the same exit, couldn't take the same curve, and impacted the cement wall about

20 feet in front of the kid. Unlike the kid, though, this guy was going at a really good clip, enough to cave in the side of his car, knock him unconscious, blood, broken glass, the works.

So, the kid grabs the first aid kit out of his van and runs over to the driver, and at the same time calls 911.

10 minutes later the cops show up, compliment the kid, etc.

Then, one of the cops notices the side of the kids van and hauls out his ticket book and writes him a $500 speeding ticket for going "too fast for prevailing conditions"

His van didn't have a black box. If it did, he could walk into a court with the evidence and get the ticket thrown out. As of now who knows what will happen. I told my customer to get a deposition from the body shop estimating the impact speed, as we all know a 5 mph collision will crumple a car like thin tin, so he may be able to get the ticket tossed based on that. But, maybe not.

If you think about it you will realize that in collisions, if the driver was not breaking the speed limit the black box data is going to be a lot more useful to the driver to get miscellaneous bullshit tickets thrown out, then it will be to the police to file charges against the driver.

It's only in cases where the driver was breaking the speed laws that black box data will work against him.

A -competent- incumbent judge, yes. It's actually pretty easy to get judges out of office that aren't competent, their peers tend to take a dim view of it not to mention that the defense lawyers that usually work that court are more than happy to fund a campaign.

Ted

Well they may be elected in the USA, but NOT in Canada! They are appointed - usually political patronage. And judges here are pretty much unanswerable to anyone. They can rule pretty much any way they want, and if you choose to dispute it, it is off to the Appeals court (Minimum $10,000 price tag!)

And even if you DO go to appeals court, then you are asking judges to rule against their fellow bretheran from the "old boys network" which they pretty much wont do unless you have them in YOUR back pocket.

This whole thing is a very serious issue. If manufacturers want to use the data for product failure analysis and improvement, then fine. But anyhting else is headed for the "slipery slope" as far as I am concerned.

041120 1520 - Nomen Nescio posted:

It is explained, in the Yale Law Journal of 1931: "The law has drawn a distinction between the ordinary use of the highway for travel, and its use for purposes of private gain. A vehicle on the road for the former purpose is there as of 'right'; one using it in the latter manner has only a 'privilege' of use."

The Constitutional Law section of American Jurisprudence explains the right: "While the freedom to travel within the United States has been held to be a basic right under the Federal Constitution which is independent of a specific provision therein, the right of locomotion has also been held to be a part of the 'liberty' guaranteed by the due process clauses."

Justice Epes, delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, explained the right quite clearly and frankly: "The right of a citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon in the ordinary course of life and business is a common right which he has under his right to enjoy life and liberty, to acquire and possess property, and to pursue happiness and safety. It includes the right in so doing to use the ordinary and usual conveyances of the day; and under the existing modes of travel includes the right to drive a horse-drawn carriage or wagon thereon, or to operate an automobile thereon, for the usual and ordinary purposes of life and business. It is not a mere privilege, like the privilege of moving a house in the street, or transporting persons or property for hire along the street, which a city may permit or prohibit at will." Justice Griffith, delivering an opinion of the Supreme Court of Mississippi, declared, upon reviewing the opinion of Justice Epes of Virginia concerning this most valuable of rights: "There seems to be no dissent among the authorities on this proposition."

You may well be asking: "Why do I believe that my driving my automobile is a privilege granted by the State, and not a right?"

In Europe, in the days of the feudal society, the King granted the privileges as the sovereign, and the subject accepted these privileges at his whim. When this country withdrew from Britain, the feudal society notion was rejected, and it was written into the Constitution of the United States that no titles of Nobility shall be granted. We had graduated from a feudal society to a contractual society. The recognition that the laboring individual had as much property in his labor as the propertied individual had in his money or land was hard fought, but was eventually won in the courts of this country. Taints of the feudal society are still noted in legal jargon where the distinction between an employer and the employee are noted as master and servant.

Also recognized by law, and the courts, is the distinction between the natural, and the artificial person; the natural person being an inhabitant of the State, in this country, and the artificial person being a corporation, or other entity, created by government, or the State. It has been declared by the Supreme Court of the United States, and other courts, that the State itself, and the federal government, are artificial persons, created to perform certain functions.

The State has blurred the distinction between the natural and artificial person to the point of the individual being duped into believing that he has no right to drive his automobile. The question has been posed to individuals: "If the State sent to you a notice declaring that your "privilege" to drive your automobile has been revoked, what would you do?" The answer was a resounding: "I would drive it anyway." Driving an automobile to work, or play, is as natural a function to most Americans now that to deprive an American of this right would be tantamount to taking his plate of food from him at the table.

It also may well be asked: "How did we lose this right?" Early in the American automobile history, most Americans did not often see an automobile in town. Only the wealthy could afford one, and when it was driven into the town the noise scared the horses, and sometimes the driver of such a contraption, being of the "upper classes", and looking down upon the "lower classes", would become careless in the operation of his motor car to the point of rudeness, putting at risk the life and limb of the walking population. The town populace would retaliate with laws regulating the use of the motor car in the town, such as the laws which declared that the motor car would have to be rendered inoperable at the village limits, and a horse team, and driver, would have to be hired to tow the vehicle into, or through, the village. As the motor car became more widely used, it became recognized as a common mode of transportation by the individual. Because of the rudeness of some of the drivers, regulations were propounded that a plate be affixed to the vehicle so that it could be identified, and its owner brought to account in case of a personal injury accident. Other individuals would hire a motor car, and driver, to take them places, and businesses were established to this end. Trucks were built to move materials over the roadways, and the vehicles and drivers were "licensed" for this purpose.

A "license", in law, is a permission granted by a "higher authority" to perform some specific function. Licensing to drive an automobile is permission granted by the State to drive. The State does not have a program for those who wish to drive an automobile as a basic right. All are lumped into the category of "artificial person".

Such a program could include a course on the Rules of the Road; driving a car; and upon completion, a Certificate of Competency that the individual recognizes that there are others on the road who are just as concerned about a safe trip. There are few who would deny that some rights could be regulated so that all may benefit from the exercise of them; such as the old argument that "Your right to thrust your fist forward ends where my face begins."

With the distinction blurred between the natural person and the artificial person, the State can withdraw the "privilege" at will, or many "conditions" can be placed upon the use of the 'privilege", such as have been proposed by some legislators that your rights be waived and the individual must submit to alcohol tests, and searches and seizures; and that child support payments must be up to date or the drivers "license" will be revoked. If the individual is "licensed" by the State, his "privilege" may well be revoked at the whim of the State. This is where the inhabitants of the States should rise up against this feudal system, and demand that the right to drive an automobile be recognized.

By now you can see how the right to drive an automobile has been relegated to the status of "privilege"; mostly through neglect, and apathy of the individual. Now most individuals actually believe that driving an automobile is a "privilege" granted by the State, as they go about seeking "permission" from the State to exercise this right.

The more extreme form of this basic right to locomotion can be seen in the No-Fly-List, the existance of which was first denied. The exact "owner", manager or maintainer of the list is still disputed, and no explanation of the legal basis of the list has ever been put forward (nor any remedy for the fact that it operates completely outside the concept of "due process").

With on-star like technolgy already here, and the vehicle data recorder about to become manditory, the "no-drive-list" and the mechanism to impliment it can't be far off.