Comment by drnick1
The alternative is to be aware of this abuse and unplug the cellular modem. It requires more or less effort depending on the car, but it can and should be done.
The alternative is to be aware of this abuse and unplug the cellular modem. It requires more or less effort depending on the car, but it can and should be done.
In many parts of the US, individual vehicles are the only viable mode of transportation. In fact, even in the NYC metro area, a car is pretty much indispensable, unless maybe you live in Manhattan and only rely on home delivery for groceries and the like. If you ever want to do anything outside of the city, you need a car.
I personally am, but there's only so much I can do. I am involved in our regional planning commission for transportation, and routinely write letters and call my representatives. I may donate some money to some of our local transportation organizations, but I'm not sure that's a good use of money yet so I haven't.
I agree with you in general though that public policy is failing. Specifically it's failing here where we continue to engage in and direct poor public policy positions because the government is very entrenched and addicted to spending taxpayer dollars. Asking the public to continue to play a catch up game of voiding their car warranty instead of actually solving the problem via policy is, in my view, simply not going to work.
It’s not a good alternative though because it puts you into a losing competition with the manufacturers. Take out the cellular modem? Next one requires connectivity to drive the car and so forth.
You could “ban” it, but the amount of effort required to raise public awareness for that and actually have our dickhead representatives due things like that is basically the same amount of effort, perhaps more, as building better cities and transportation modes.
We build and subsidize highways, we could do the same with other methods of transportation and have competition instead of big gubmint cars.