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Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

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Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#461

Post by warent »

jaredhallen wrote: post #443
rconti wrote: post #375

In college, a roommate of mine was double-parked, or parked in a fire zone, or something, in our 8-house cul-de-sac. He ran upstairs to get something from his room, and a tow truck appeared (this all happened in well under 5 minutes). When he came out, he argued with the tow truck guys a bunch, but they kept hooking up his car and arguing back and couldn't be reasoned with, etc etc. My friend sat on the hood to keep…

Interesting to see so many different perspectives on this one. Seems like I'm in the minority, but my perspective is you are absolutely not towing my car while I am present. I'll get in and drive away while it's hooked to the truck. Or whatever I have to do. You are not towing it. Period.

I'm not sure what country you live in, IANAL, in the US you're going to be liable for all damages and risk a license suspension for doing that. It's dangerous to the tow driver and there's no world where you can reasonably argue endangering them

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#462

Post by kube-system »

makeitdouble wrote: post #381
kube-system wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with the end point, but I have a hard time understanding why the Hertz case demonstrates that Ford is likely to lie with criminal intent about a mistaken repo. It has literally nothing in common except that it involves a car. If Ford wants to lie about repos or lie about human error, they can do that now, they don't need a computer to do it. The whole damn process is subject to human error as it is t…

On the "people lying" side of the issue you're describing, up until now a tow company needed to be involved. With this system, the middle man is gone, so potentially a single employee could initiate repossesion of a whole fleet by themself. Will the owners have recourse after being stranded without their car explaining their boss it just went away ? probably. Will the employee be punished ? surely. Is it something we…

> On the "people lying" side of the issue you're describing, up until now a tow company needed to be involved. With this system, the middle man is gone, so potentially a single employee could initiate repossesion of a whole fleet by themself.

Tow truck drivers don't currently play any role in certifying the requests they get. A bank emails them repo paperwork, and they tow the car. If the paperwork they receive is not correct, they would have no way of even knowing that. In fact, the human tow truck drivers themselves create another layer of possibility for human mistakes.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#463

Post by patrick451 »

ilyt wrote: post #430
dreamcompiler wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many places where illegal parking is common, tow truck drivers stage close by or hire spotters so they can hook up cars quickly. They can make a lot of money hauling away cars from drivers who only plan to stop for 2 minutes. https://nyti.ms/3xW9OQX

This seems like stuff that should never be privatized or under non-police control. Police hires company to tow stuff away sure, but not "some random bumblefuck have right to do the police's job of "law enforcement"

You've heard of civil asset forfeiture, right?

> Owners need not ever be arrested or convicted of a crime for their cash, cars, or even real estate to be taken away permanently by the government. The government does not have to charge the property owner with any specific crime in order to seize the property, and must prove only by a preponderance of the evidence that the property is legally forfeitable. After property has been seized, the burden of proof shifts to the owner, who must prove that the property was not involved in nor obtained as a result of illegal activity [1]

The cops are far worse than some corrupt tow truck drivers. You have a fighting chance against a private company, but you'll rarely win fighting city hall.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/civil_forfeiture

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#464

Post by 6177c40f »

TheCondor wrote: post #245
spacephysics wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this misses the forest for the trees. This technology in any car should be a violation of our rights. A corporation dictates when to access the vehicle remotely? It’ll start with justifiable use cases. In a not too distant future, imagine something like: * can’t access car during peak CO2 emission times because you got the cheaper monthly rate that uses a green subsidy to pay for the cheaper rate * your incor…

>> * can’t access car during peak CO2 emission times because you got the cheaper monthly rate that uses a green subsidy to pay for the cheaper rate This sounds like a feature that opens up a new avenue of potential financial engineering. If your car could enforce that it was in 'green mode' or didn't drive at certain times and you could get a subsidy or tax break for it, that might potentially be a good incentive to…

> I might not want to buy that feature but it allows for some interesting possibilities.

In practice, not everyone might have the choice to just not buy that feature.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#465

Post by zingplex »

autoexec wrote: post #422
elil17 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents don't need to be safe. You can patent a transportation device that works by firing a human out of a cannon, or a self driving car that simply runs over pedestrians, or even just a method of killing someone.

> You can patent a transportation device that works by firing a human out of a cannon, or a self driving car that simply runs over pedestrians, or even just a method of killing someone. Can I patent a self driving car that runs over pedestrians so that I can sue any company whose self driving car does it that hasn't paid me a license fee?

No, Tesla is prior art

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#466

Post by holler »

rconti wrote: post #375

In college, a roommate of mine was double-parked, or parked in a fire zone, or something, in our 8-house cul-de-sac. He ran upstairs to get something from his room, and a tow truck appeared (this all happened in well under 5 minutes). When he came out, he argued with the tow truck guys a bunch, but they kept hooking up his car and arguing back and couldn't be reasoned with, etc etc. My friend sat on the hood to keep…

This reminds me of my own college experience where I had accidentally parked in a beach lot late one night without seeing the no parking sign, and 15-20 mins after checking out the surf we got a phone call from our friend who had been passed out in the back of the car.

She was hysterical after waking up and discovering the car was on the bed of a tow truck barreling down the highway.

I can't recall exactly how the tow truck driver was alerted of the girl in the back seat, but they brought it back and released it.

So yeah, humans in/on vehicle getting towed prevents them from towing.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#467

Post by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung »

HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #358

The problem with this isn't the idea of a car repossessing itself per se, because repossession is already a legitimate thing; it's the idea that your car can be remotely controlled by anyone other than you. There are already so many things that can go wrong. I don't want to buy a car that can be remotely disabled because I drove near a protest, or because there was a "clerical error" at Ford, or because my payment di…

If you want to know why this sort of thing might be bad, ask Michael Hastings.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#468

Post by nitwit005 »

magic_hamster wrote: post #361
HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #358

The problem with this isn't the idea of a car repossessing itself per se, because repossession is already a legitimate thing; it's the idea that your car can be remotely controlled by anyone other than you. There are already so many things that can go wrong. I don't want to buy a car that can be remotely disabled because I drove near a protest, or because there was a "clerical error" at Ford, or because my payment di…

Brace yourself then, because the future of automotive is highly connected, and in many ways it already is. Every car since the early 2000s has computerized components that control everything from power steering to infotainment systems, and your car probably already communicates with some servers using a built in cellular sim. Hackers have been able to compromise cars for at least a couple of decades, and while car ma…

Sadly, it seems the Titanic must sink to get maritime safety laws.

Eventually some hacker will decide crashing cars is fun, and I don't expect real security to happen before that. The same goes for medical equipment.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#469

Post by ashwagary »

HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #358

The problem with this isn't the idea of a car repossessing itself per se, because repossession is already a legitimate thing; it's the idea that your car can be remotely controlled by anyone other than you. There are already so many things that can go wrong. I don't want to buy a car that can be remotely disabled because I drove near a protest, or because there was a "clerical error" at Ford, or because my payment di…

Tech literate people often complain about buying portable consumer devices and not "really" owning them.

This is a whole nother level of control loss. Not only do you not completely own the hardware but in the worst case scenario, the hardware can remotely be used to restrict freedom of movement or kill you and others.

I personally wouldn't recommend buying an electric vehicle unless it's extremely dumb or is capable of running an open-source and customizable operating system.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#470

Post by ashwagary »

JohnFen wrote: post #386
magic_hamster wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brace yourself then, because the future of automotive is highly connected, and in many ways it already is. Every car since the early 2000s has computerized components that control everything from power steering to infotainment systems, and your car probably already communicates with some servers using a built in cellular sim. Hackers have been able to compromise cars for at least a couple of decades, and while car ma…

This is why I only buy old cars. If that becomes impossible in the future, that would be enough to get me to finally give up owning a car entirely.

True, all the smarter people end up becoming Will Smith in iRobot.
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