Here in Minneapolis, there have been multiple anecdotal reports of ICE being able to remotely unlock cars, disable them, and even open windows. Whether its true, its certainly seems possible.
Its made me very concerned about public safety if we allow our government to have this power. I actually believe being able to own and use a vehicle freely should be protected under the 2nd amendment.
Im picturing a world where the US could mass disable vehicles based on the owners score in their fancy new palantir database. We should have the right to flee danger and use a vehicle for that.
I also think the second amendment should be applied encryption for the same reason. Encryption is essential to the people's ability to mount a defense against tyranny.
They've come up with a memo saying that non-judicial warrants can let them break in. This has historically been very much not allowed.
Edit: As a quick explanation, this is more or less a separation-of-powers thing. The rule has been that for the executive to enter someone's home they need a warrant from a judge, a member of the judicial branch. They now say that an "administrative warrant" is enough, issued by an immigration judge -- but immigration judges are just executive branch employees, so this is saying that the executive can decide on its own when it wants to break into your house.
not saying you’re wrong, but we have to get in the habit of sourcing our claims! whistleblowers testified to Congress about this memo that began circulating around mid-2025.
Some of this is over-the-top paranoia. If ICE wants to get into your car, they'll just break the window.
It's been very long established that nobody has a "right" to operate a motor vehicle. It's something you are permitted to do under the terms of a license, and it's fairly regulated (though not as much as in some other countries).
> Some of this is over-the-top paranoia. If ICE wants to get into your car, they'll just break the window.
Then when I get to my car I can see the broken window and report it or at least know someone broke into my car. With remote entry law enforcement or ice can get in and out potentially without notice.
Just because police/ice/thieves/etc can break down my door and enter my house does not mean I am on board with giving any of them a key.
>It's been very long established that nobody has a "right" to operate a motor vehicle. It's something you are permitted to do under the terms of a license, and it's fairly regulated (though not as much as in some other countries).
Sure you do, in private nobody can be prevented. You need a license and insurance to drive on public roads.
It’s pretty common to have unlicensed off road vehicles, especially in the mountain west. Farmers and ranchers often have at least one of these. There’s plenty of recreational users as well.
That doesn’t mean that this isn’t true in a technical sense. It’s correct that it isn’t feasible for the majority of the population.
You’ll sometimes also see small communities with private roads that allow unlicensed vehicles, such as retirement communities, but they often have their own standards for what is allowed.
I absolutely think this is going to be a problem. This is a government that does not believe in the constitution. They are pushing the Ten Commandments in Texas and Louisiana schools, encouraging ICE agents to perform warrantless home invasions, and arresting US Citizens or their kids in below freezing temperatures. They will go much further than we imagined, well beyond what even China does to control their population. All power must be stripped from them.
You obviously are not very old or know a lot about US history. You should read up, nothing what you mention is new.
>They are pushing the Ten Commandments in Texas and Louisiana schools
10 Commandments and religion in schools has been a battle since the beginning of the public school era. It was a huge deal specifically in the 1920's; 60's; and the 90's and 2000's. This is nothing new.
>ICE agents to perform warrantless home invasions, and arresting US Citizens or their kids in below freezing temperatures
Wait till you hear about a kid named Elian Gonzalez from 2000. One of the most famous examples
>This is a government that does not believe in the constitution.
I can't wait until you read the part about the PATRIOT Act, renewed consistently by both parties and supported by all three branches of Government. Also plate readers and tracking put in by the Obama administration. Expansion of Border Patrol by the same administration.
Finding some precedents doesn't address the major changes. Do you really dispute there have been major changes in executive branch behavior?
> Wait till you hear about a kid named Elian Gonzalez
Elian's mother died at sea, trying to reach the US from Cuba with Elian. Elian's father sought to bring the child back to Cuba, but an uncle in Miami refused to surrender custody. Obviously, barring something unusual, a father has custody of their child and the INS, courts, and Department of Justice agreed. There was an extensive legal process and also mediation.
It became a partisan political issue and after all that the uncle still refused to surrender Elian. Law enforcement forcibly removed the child and gave custody to the father.
I don't see how that is related to the current warrantless home invasion policy.
> Do you really dispute there have been major changes in executive branch behavior?
No, but recent actions in the last 20 years, and certainly the last year have absolutely proven to me the Executive Branch, as I've been saying since the Reagan administration, has always had too much power.
> I don't see how that is related to the current warrantless home invasion policy.
While I agree, the point is the methods are the same as they were back then. INS and Border Patrol is exempt from (some) warrants. Border Patrol handled that raid. Badly.
I mean, we can talk about other Executive branches abusing their power all day (Waco; Homeland Security/TSA searches; DEA Searches; Iran-Contra; CIA Operations in the 60s-80's) etc... the point is, nothing ever changes.
This is so tiresome when people who don't have a single tank think they are in a position to allow people with tanks to do this or that.
Things happen because their value for people in power exceeds the value of your consent. And you have fewer and fewer ways to make your consent any more valuable to cross the threshold of relevancy.
I know it's an attractive illusion to believe that people have a say. But it's time to shake it off because this veil is one of the things used for control.
The US has lost multiple wars to goat herders in pickup trucks with small arms.
As Ukraine has demonstrated, a shaped charge and consumer drone is highly effective against even heavy mechanized armor. ERA doesn't work well for multiple hits, and drones and HMX/RDX are cheap.
Tell your history lesson to a Reaper drone. You can see how modern version of people's insurgency could look like in modern Gaza. This is exactly how would citizens vs. US play out. With Palantir painting the targets on the appropriate backs and declaring anyone in the blast radius as domestic terrorist.
You really think the US government can bomb its own citizens with impunity and not completely destroy their own industrial base that makes bombing citizens possible? The US government would very quickly collapse.
Refineries and factories don't work without people and are exceedingly vulnerable to locals.
At the moment the government with 15% hardcore support is rounding up people on the streets en masse, violating decades of established practices, while harming industrial base that depend on work of those people. And somehow pretty much everyone peacefully goes along with it. Or get occasionally shot.
And? Minnesota is under strike right now and Arizona's AG just told its citizens that they can legally shoot ICE if they don't properly identify themselves or have a warrant or legal cause to arrest them. Still 95% of the nation is operating as normal, but that isn't possible when people are being actively bombed.
The US government has made it pretty clear that we're two countries. There's the USA, and "democratic-controlled cesspools". Dropping a bomb on Chicago isn't that nuts when you don't think of Chicago as part of your country.
Bicycles do not have software to install a kill switch. They do not have license plates to be read by surveillance cameras. They do not require costly insurance to legally ride. They are not powered by fossil fuels. Buy a bike. Learn to maintain it. Advocate for safe biking infrastructure in your area.
Sure, buy a bike. AND buy an older (but maintainable) vehicle for hauling, transporting multiple people, and traveling long distances. It’s not either or.
I have a wonderful cargo bike (urban arrow - splurge purchase for my 35th birthday and second kid) - I use it for most in-city transportation tasks, including picking up kids from daycare/school, groceries, trips to restaurants, etc.
I also have a 2011 truck with ~200k miles on it. It's well take care of, and shows no signs of stopping any time soon. It hauls stuff from home improvement stores, help family move, and takes us on vacation.
I've been debating getting bumper stickers for each of them along the lines of:
I had such an older vehicle until a couple weeks ago when the fuel tank supports rusted to the point the tank wasn't supported. There was just more maintenance needed than I had time to do - it would cost about what I paid for a modern 3 year old vehicle just to get it running and who knows what it will need next year from parts I wouldn't replace. (the new car is also electric so much cheaper to drive, though it doesn't have the capacity of the 1 ton truck it replaced so I'm stuck when I need that)
Just be aware that newer vehicles often have more things that can and will fail, and parts seem less standardized these days, so you may not be able to keep it running past the expected service lifetime.
Older vehicles (depending on the platform) often use common parts that are shared even across manufacturers. And third party manufacturers keep cranking out new stock for them.
I am hoping that this type of system develops for simple no-frills electric vehicles over time. Although laws like the one mentioned here keep piling up, increasing vehicle complexity and cost of maintenance.
Parts were mostly never standardized. The difference is when a production run ends they would sell all the tooling to a third party that makes parts under their own name. (and even before production ends parts that break often are worth duplicating). With computers when the production run of the LCD, CPU, ... ends nobody is making more. Even if you could get the software to install, nobody makes the computer at all at any price.
Transportation influences urban development. That is why most houses have a garage. There is no such thing as private transport (streets are public). Transportation has been heavily centralized since the New Deal. The bicycle was okay for most people living in cities in the 30s, now it is not because the government has favored the car infrastructure over the last decades. I think we need to start with not letting government develop their big infrastructure projects which are not resilient. Advocating for the use of bicycles might make sense in some places yet bicycle infrastructure is required.
Also, federal highways are partially a national security issue, and are designed for quickly moving military equipment across otherwise isolated areas. Guidelines for federal interstates are specified jointly with the DoD to ensure that military transport can fit under bridges, and that bridges can support their weight. Industry is the other most important user, while individual consumers/families are the least considered users.
Everyone always assumes that individual choices and consumer behavior drives this stuff, and then they wonder why nothing changes even though we all started using reusable tote bags and LED bulbs. Stop blaming the consumer!
(The DoD is the largest institutional polluter in the world, by the way.)
That is very interesting. It is funny to see how influential the federal government has been on society, infrastructure and other areas of life. Specially considering that some people opposed to it during the confederation period because they saw it as another centralized authority (anti-federalist papers).
I dunno, I live in what most people would call peak Suburbia and have all sorts of bike trails I didn’t even know existed until I got the electric assisted bike, I can range 5 miles away from my house in any direction without having to be on any major roads, and have a trailer for doing grocery shopping. I went 15 miles away and back one time but took quite awhile. All the grocery stores I frequent are within this range. When it’s warm out, I use my bike for probably 90% of my trips out of the house.
The exception is that he uses those bike lanes for shopping, not just exercise. Every suburb has plenty of great biking space (the streets are not busy!), but nobody thinks to try to use them that way.
* Extreme Weather: Severe heat, heavy snow, or torrential rain can make biking unsafe or impractical without specialized gear and high physical endurance.
* Accessibility & Mobility Issues: Individuals with certain physical disabilities or chronic health conditions may find traditional cycling impossible. (This also affects an aging population.)
* Time Constraints: For those with "trip-chaining" needs (e.g., daycare drop-off → work → grocery store → gym), the extra time required for cycling can be prohibitive.
* Infrastructure: Older adults are more sensitive to "heavy traffic" and "lack of safe places." Seniors don't stop cycling because they can't do it, but because they don't feel safe in traffic. (Good argument for upgrading roadways.)
* Care-giving: When parents become dependent on their children, often the children need to shuttle their parents around. A parent with dementia who escaped into the neighbourhood can be rapidly collected and ushered home in a car, not so much a bike.
* Theft & Vandalism: I've never had a car stolen. Two locked bikes, on the other hand...
Severe heat, heavy snow, or torrential rain can make driving a car unsafe as well. Individuals with certain disabilities, chronic health conditions, or a plethora of age may also find driving impossible. For those with "trip-chaining" needs, extra time required for parking cars can be prohibitive. Old people don't like traffic and can escape and run away so fast you have to drive them back? And you're seriously including the idea that car theft is not a concern? These are some tortured arguments.
The correct argument here is "if bicycles become the dominant transportation mode, then the government will absolutely mandate kill switches for them too." "Bicycles don't have software" hasn't been true for years. E-bikes and wireless deraillers have been around a long time.
Bikes without software will be around for the foreseeable future. They're the cheapest and most plentiful version of bike. In the unlikely scenario that all bikes somehow become electric, old bikes are much easier to maintain than old cars.
My argument to my own post is that cameras that track cars and license plates could easily be reconfigured to track bikes and pedestrians. In that case there's no transportation mode that will save you from surveillance. The cameras have to go.
You do get the idea though, that just because bikes work for what you need to do, they won't necessarily work for what any other given person needs to do, right?
Also, why the hell have you got wireless derailleurs? What is the point? What possible advantage can they have over perfectly normal mechanical ones?
Exactly. I love bikes and live near a grocery store, but unfortunately getting to that store (or anywhere really) requires a few minutes of travel on a dangerously busy highway. It’s not safe to bike that road regularly.
I once lived somewhere that was half an hour from the store by car. Thankfully that isn’t the case anymore.
A vehicle (presumably a car, since bikes are vehicles too) gets you and your stuff from point A to point B. Bikes do that too, though at a smaller scale.
If your commute or your errands aren't excessively long or require the use of a controlled-access highway, a bike's a perfectly fine alternative. The limiting factors are seasonal road or bike path maintenance and the discipline of other road users.
I hadn't heard of the requirement before. Mandatory registration originally seems to have been intended to address bike theft. All bicycles sold in California must have a serial number. A significant number of cities (most?) had ordinances requiring registration. But few people knew about it and even fewer registered their bikes.
I'd prefer something with a slightly more libertarian bent:
The hardware is required in new cars. It's illegal to make it report false values or for someone other than the driver to record. When you press the start button, an LED shines into your skin and records fingerprint hash, blood alcohol. This data is recorded/reported only when a public road has been entered or crossed, and erased from local storage in 24 hours.
The reporting is optional. You can turn it off. You set it up to report to your insurance company. If you don't, your insurance rates will probably rise.
What does society get out of this? People are strongly encouraged not to drink and drive. They get a clear and unambiguous signal if they are over the legal limit or not. We get some insurance data about how many people are drinking and driving nonetheless, and their actual accident rates. There's no emergency situation where someone can't activate their car. Drivers' "freedom" to drive without insurance or without historical monitoring isn't infringed. You can still drive drunk on private property without consequence.
Imagine driving in a remote road on a cold night, no cell signal, a deer crosses the road and you swerve to avoid it. The car thinks your drunk and kills the car.
You're stuck, no cell signal, good chance of hypothermia.
A bigger, real-world problem is that cars with lane-keeping assist will steer you back towards the deer.
Some of the earlier EVs I tried had lane-keeping assist so brutal that it was like trying to steer a car with a broken power steering pump belt, if it didn't want you to change lanes - genuinely dangerous.
The Kia EV I tried a few weeks ago just felt like it was tramlining a bit when I changed lanes without indicating (no real need to indicate, on a completely empty road).
In my car, I regularly get a notice that I'm not being attentive and that I should go for a coffee break. It's never right and my best guess is that it's always on a straight highway road for more than 15 minutes where I'm not moving the wheel very much. I don't think this kill switch is a good idea and might attract unnecessary attention from law enforcement who might ding me for something completely unrelated (going 6mph above speed limit).
I have heard stories in Minneapolis about ICE remotely unlocking cars and opening windows. This seems technically possible to me. It makes me worry about public safety if the government has this control. I imagine a future where the government disables cars based on a score in a Palantir database. We need the right to use a car to escape danger. I also think encryption is important for defense against tyranny. The Second Amendment should protect encryption too.
The devil is in the details. The democrats for this (that didn't vote for this) need to change the existing law so it has strong privacy requirements. Right now the law is that regulations must be created - but what those regulations are is up to whatever bureaucrat decides to make them: they could be good or bad.
Here in Minneapolis, there have been multiple anecdotal reports of ICE being able to remotely unlock cars, disable them, and even open windows. Whether its true, its certainly seems possible.
Its made me very concerned about public safety if we allow our government to have this power. I actually believe being able to own and use a vehicle freely should be protected under the 2nd amendment.
Im picturing a world where the US could mass disable vehicles based on the owners score in their fancy new palantir database. We should have the right to flee danger and use a vehicle for that.
I also think the second amendment should be applied encryption for the same reason. Encryption is essential to the people's ability to mount a defense against tyranny.
> Its made me very concerned about public safety if we allow our government to have this power.
ICE says it can legally enter homes without a warrant
So we’re beyond concern now
>ICE says it can legally enter homes without a warrant
Source for this claim, besides the usual exemptions that are available to all law enforcement (ie. exigent circumstances)?
Source for the exigent circumstances exemption ?
Here's a representative news article about it (WaPo because they were first in the search results): https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/01/22/ice-me... (paywall-avoiding: https://archive.is/bsdv9)
They've come up with a memo saying that non-judicial warrants can let them break in. This has historically been very much not allowed.
Edit: As a quick explanation, this is more or less a separation-of-powers thing. The rule has been that for the executive to enter someone's home they need a warrant from a judge, a member of the judicial branch. They now say that an "administrative warrant" is enough, issued by an immigration judge -- but immigration judges are just executive branch employees, so this is saying that the executive can decide on its own when it wants to break into your house.
They wrote a memo saying they could.
Your claim is not a source, so downvoted.
The people who replied to you provided the source: upvoted them.
not saying you’re wrong, but we have to get in the habit of sourcing our claims! whistleblowers testified to Congress about this memo that began circulating around mid-2025.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26499371-dhs-ice-mem...
Some people also need to get in the habit of researching a claim by themselves.
https://apnews.com/article/ice-arrests-warrants-minneapolis-...
> Source for this claim, besides the usual exemptions that are available to all law enforcement (ie. exigent circumstances)?
Context and discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGr-yWEu0hc
The TL/DR: administrative warrant vs an actual "signed off by a judge" warrant
Remote unlock is on many cars via an API.
It's the same API being used on your phone to remote start / unlock / open windows etc.
It's not unlikely to think that ICE has mandated these companies to corporate.
Some of this is over-the-top paranoia. If ICE wants to get into your car, they'll just break the window.
It's been very long established that nobody has a "right" to operate a motor vehicle. It's something you are permitted to do under the terms of a license, and it's fairly regulated (though not as much as in some other countries).
> Some of this is over-the-top paranoia. If ICE wants to get into your car, they'll just break the window.
Then when I get to my car I can see the broken window and report it or at least know someone broke into my car. With remote entry law enforcement or ice can get in and out potentially without notice.
Just because police/ice/thieves/etc can break down my door and enter my house does not mean I am on board with giving any of them a key.
>It's been very long established that nobody has a "right" to operate a motor vehicle. It's something you are permitted to do under the terms of a license, and it's fairly regulated (though not as much as in some other countries).
Sure you do, in private nobody can be prevented. You need a license and insurance to drive on public roads.
I find this a very odd and non compelling argument
Just now many people have a) private land and b) private land in sufficient quantity and state that you can actually drive a car on it?
It’s pretty common to have unlicensed off road vehicles, especially in the mountain west. Farmers and ranchers often have at least one of these. There’s plenty of recreational users as well.
Compare the numbers of farmers and ranchers to the rest of the population.
How many recreational users have private land in sufficient quantities?
That doesn’t mean that this isn’t true in a technical sense. It’s correct that it isn’t feasible for the majority of the population.
You’ll sometimes also see small communities with private roads that allow unlicensed vehicles, such as retirement communities, but they often have their own standards for what is allowed.
Farmers who own their farm is the traditional group that would qualify. That population is much smaller than it used to be to my understanding though.
basically every farmer.
Having vehicle override would be an extremely concerning capability. (If confirmed)
Your take on “rights” if wrong to the point of insanity. You literally don’t know what rights are and should stop talking.
I absolutely think this is going to be a problem. This is a government that does not believe in the constitution. They are pushing the Ten Commandments in Texas and Louisiana schools, encouraging ICE agents to perform warrantless home invasions, and arresting US Citizens or their kids in below freezing temperatures. They will go much further than we imagined, well beyond what even China does to control their population. All power must be stripped from them.
You obviously are not very old or know a lot about US history. You should read up, nothing what you mention is new.
10 Commandments and religion in schools has been a battle since the beginning of the public school era. It was a huge deal specifically in the 1920's; 60's; and the 90's and 2000's. This is nothing new. Wait till you hear about a kid named Elian Gonzalez from 2000. One of the most famous examples I can't wait until you read the part about the PATRIOT Act, renewed consistently by both parties and supported by all three branches of Government. Also plate readers and tracking put in by the Obama administration. Expansion of Border Patrol by the same administration.Just because we were a bad country in the past, does not mean we should continue to be a bad one today.
"BSAB" Fallacy detected.
People tend to believe that the direction of progress should be forward, I guess.
Finding some precedents doesn't address the major changes. Do you really dispute there have been major changes in executive branch behavior?
> Wait till you hear about a kid named Elian Gonzalez
Elian's mother died at sea, trying to reach the US from Cuba with Elian. Elian's father sought to bring the child back to Cuba, but an uncle in Miami refused to surrender custody. Obviously, barring something unusual, a father has custody of their child and the INS, courts, and Department of Justice agreed. There was an extensive legal process and also mediation.
It became a partisan political issue and after all that the uncle still refused to surrender Elian. Law enforcement forcibly removed the child and gave custody to the father.
I don't see how that is related to the current warrantless home invasion policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli%C3%A1n_Gonz%C3%A1lez
> Do you really dispute there have been major changes in executive branch behavior?
No, but recent actions in the last 20 years, and certainly the last year have absolutely proven to me the Executive Branch, as I've been saying since the Reagan administration, has always had too much power.
> I don't see how that is related to the current warrantless home invasion policy.
While I agree, the point is the methods are the same as they were back then. INS and Border Patrol is exempt from (some) warrants. Border Patrol handled that raid. Badly.
I mean, we can talk about other Executive branches abusing their power all day (Waco; Homeland Security/TSA searches; DEA Searches; Iran-Contra; CIA Operations in the 60s-80's) etc... the point is, nothing ever changes.
> if we allow our government
This is so tiresome when people who don't have a single tank think they are in a position to allow people with tanks to do this or that.
Things happen because their value for people in power exceeds the value of your consent. And you have fewer and fewer ways to make your consent any more valuable to cross the threshold of relevancy.
I know it's an attractive illusion to believe that people have a say. But it's time to shake it off because this veil is one of the things used for control.
You underestimate both the capacity of an armed citizenry and the hardware that we have at our disposal.
There are in fact privately owned tanks in the US.
Tell that to the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, the Viet Cong, Mao, and George Washington.
Just because the government has tanks does not mean "we have tanks and nukes, therefore we'll win" has proven true across military history.
The US has lost multiple wars to goat herders in pickup trucks with small arms.
As Ukraine has demonstrated, a shaped charge and consumer drone is highly effective against even heavy mechanized armor. ERA doesn't work well for multiple hits, and drones and HMX/RDX are cheap.
Tell your history lesson to a Reaper drone. You can see how modern version of people's insurgency could look like in modern Gaza. This is exactly how would citizens vs. US play out. With Palantir painting the targets on the appropriate backs and declaring anyone in the blast radius as domestic terrorist.
The facilities and shipping containers where those are operated out of aren't bulletproof.
What makes you think the army will go along with it? Sure some will, but expect many soldiers will rebel.
Army goes along with anyone that ensures continual financing of the army. Review history of any putsch ever.
They went along with Iraq despite knowing it was a lie.
"We knew they didn't have weapons of mass destruction when we rolled up and didn't immediately get gassed"
Jan 6th worked, and they didn't even successfully take and hold the Capitol.
You really think the US government can bomb its own citizens with impunity and not completely destroy their own industrial base that makes bombing citizens possible? The US government would very quickly collapse.
Refineries and factories don't work without people and are exceedingly vulnerable to locals.
Fear makes a lot of well intended people comply.
At the moment the government with 15% hardcore support is rounding up people on the streets en masse, violating decades of established practices, while harming industrial base that depend on work of those people. And somehow pretty much everyone peacefully goes along with it. Or get occasionally shot.
And? Minnesota is under strike right now and Arizona's AG just told its citizens that they can legally shoot ICE if they don't properly identify themselves or have a warrant or legal cause to arrest them. Still 95% of the nation is operating as normal, but that isn't possible when people are being actively bombed.
The US government has made it pretty clear that we're two countries. There's the USA, and "democratic-controlled cesspools". Dropping a bomb on Chicago isn't that nuts when you don't think of Chicago as part of your country.
Bicycles do not have software to install a kill switch. They do not have license plates to be read by surveillance cameras. They do not require costly insurance to legally ride. They are not powered by fossil fuels. Buy a bike. Learn to maintain it. Advocate for safe biking infrastructure in your area.
Sure, buy a bike. AND buy an older (but maintainable) vehicle for hauling, transporting multiple people, and traveling long distances. It’s not either or.
Entirely this.
I have a wonderful cargo bike (urban arrow - splurge purchase for my 35th birthday and second kid) - I use it for most in-city transportation tasks, including picking up kids from daycare/school, groceries, trips to restaurants, etc.
I also have a 2011 truck with ~200k miles on it. It's well take care of, and shows no signs of stopping any time soon. It hauls stuff from home improvement stores, help family move, and takes us on vacation.
I've been debating getting bumper stickers for each of them along the lines of:
"My other ebike is a truck" - for the bike
and
"My other truck is an ebike" - for the truck
I wish I had the use for a cargo bike. They're so cool.
I had such an older vehicle until a couple weeks ago when the fuel tank supports rusted to the point the tank wasn't supported. There was just more maintenance needed than I had time to do - it would cost about what I paid for a modern 3 year old vehicle just to get it running and who knows what it will need next year from parts I wouldn't replace. (the new car is also electric so much cheaper to drive, though it doesn't have the capacity of the 1 ton truck it replaced so I'm stuck when I need that)
Just be aware that newer vehicles often have more things that can and will fail, and parts seem less standardized these days, so you may not be able to keep it running past the expected service lifetime.
Older vehicles (depending on the platform) often use common parts that are shared even across manufacturers. And third party manufacturers keep cranking out new stock for them.
I am hoping that this type of system develops for simple no-frills electric vehicles over time. Although laws like the one mentioned here keep piling up, increasing vehicle complexity and cost of maintenance.
Parts were mostly never standardized. The difference is when a production run ends they would sell all the tooling to a third party that makes parts under their own name. (and even before production ends parts that break often are worth duplicating). With computers when the production run of the LCD, CPU, ... ends nobody is making more. Even if you could get the software to install, nobody makes the computer at all at any price.
Bicycles are also not a viable replacement for almost all the uses of a vehicle. None of this advice is useful.
Transportation influences urban development. That is why most houses have a garage. There is no such thing as private transport (streets are public). Transportation has been heavily centralized since the New Deal. The bicycle was okay for most people living in cities in the 30s, now it is not because the government has favored the car infrastructure over the last decades. I think we need to start with not letting government develop their big infrastructure projects which are not resilient. Advocating for the use of bicycles might make sense in some places yet bicycle infrastructure is required.
> the government has favored the car infrastructure over the last decades
It was a combination of federal push for highways and consumer demand for greater distance and easier travel.
Also, federal highways are partially a national security issue, and are designed for quickly moving military equipment across otherwise isolated areas. Guidelines for federal interstates are specified jointly with the DoD to ensure that military transport can fit under bridges, and that bridges can support their weight. Industry is the other most important user, while individual consumers/families are the least considered users.
Everyone always assumes that individual choices and consumer behavior drives this stuff, and then they wonder why nothing changes even though we all started using reusable tote bags and LED bulbs. Stop blaming the consumer!
(The DoD is the largest institutional polluter in the world, by the way.)
That is very interesting. It is funny to see how influential the federal government has been on society, infrastructure and other areas of life. Specially considering that some people opposed to it during the confederation period because they saw it as another centralized authority (anti-federalist papers).
I dunno, I live in what most people would call peak Suburbia and have all sorts of bike trails I didn’t even know existed until I got the electric assisted bike, I can range 5 miles away from my house in any direction without having to be on any major roads, and have a trailer for doing grocery shopping. I went 15 miles away and back one time but took quite awhile. All the grocery stores I frequent are within this range. When it’s warm out, I use my bike for probably 90% of my trips out of the house.
Your situation is very much the exception and not the norm in most of the US, suburban or not.
The exception is that he uses those bike lanes for shopping, not just exercise. Every suburb has plenty of great biking space (the streets are not busy!), but nobody thinks to try to use them that way.
Beg to differ, they're viable for basically all local use cases...
Groceries? Yep. School? Yep. Commuting? Yep. Etc.
They aren't viable for hauling multi-ton loads, or covering long distances, that's about it.
> that's about it.
Avid cyclist here.
* Extreme Weather: Severe heat, heavy snow, or torrential rain can make biking unsafe or impractical without specialized gear and high physical endurance.
* Accessibility & Mobility Issues: Individuals with certain physical disabilities or chronic health conditions may find traditional cycling impossible. (This also affects an aging population.)
* Time Constraints: For those with "trip-chaining" needs (e.g., daycare drop-off → work → grocery store → gym), the extra time required for cycling can be prohibitive.
* Infrastructure: Older adults are more sensitive to "heavy traffic" and "lack of safe places." Seniors don't stop cycling because they can't do it, but because they don't feel safe in traffic. (Good argument for upgrading roadways.)
* Care-giving: When parents become dependent on their children, often the children need to shuttle their parents around. A parent with dementia who escaped into the neighbourhood can be rapidly collected and ushered home in a car, not so much a bike.
* Theft & Vandalism: I've never had a car stolen. Two locked bikes, on the other hand...
Severe heat, heavy snow, or torrential rain can make driving a car unsafe as well. Individuals with certain disabilities, chronic health conditions, or a plethora of age may also find driving impossible. For those with "trip-chaining" needs, extra time required for parking cars can be prohibitive. Old people don't like traffic and can escape and run away so fast you have to drive them back? And you're seriously including the idea that car theft is not a concern? These are some tortured arguments.
The correct argument here is "if bicycles become the dominant transportation mode, then the government will absolutely mandate kill switches for them too." "Bicycles don't have software" hasn't been true for years. E-bikes and wireless deraillers have been around a long time.
Bikes without software will be around for the foreseeable future. They're the cheapest and most plentiful version of bike. In the unlikely scenario that all bikes somehow become electric, old bikes are much easier to maintain than old cars.
My argument to my own post is that cameras that track cars and license plates could easily be reconfigured to track bikes and pedestrians. In that case there's no transportation mode that will save you from surveillance. The cameras have to go.
You do get the idea though, that just because bikes work for what you need to do, they won't necessarily work for what any other given person needs to do, right?
Also, why the hell have you got wireless derailleurs? What is the point? What possible advantage can they have over perfectly normal mechanical ones?
Not in Texas, they're not viable for most uses, the parent commenter is completely correct.
The same is true for many states in the US, perhaps even most of the US.
Agree. Texas is pretty bad. In most places you cannot exist without a car. No wonder Mcallen is the most obese city the US.
Hence the last sentence of my post:
> Advocate for safe biking infrastructure in your area.
We built dangerous highways. We can build bikeways as well.
Depends on where you live. I live in the sticks. 2 hour rides to the store on a windy road isn't really viable.
Moreover, time is a limited resource. Even adding 15 minutes here and there take away time I would have to spend with family, work on a project, etc.
Exactly. I love bikes and live near a grocery store, but unfortunately getting to that store (or anywhere really) requires a few minutes of travel on a dangerously busy highway. It’s not safe to bike that road regularly.
I once lived somewhere that was half an hour from the store by car. Thankfully that isn’t the case anymore.
Almost all? I think most car trips could have been bike trips.
What?
A vehicle (presumably a car, since bikes are vehicles too) gets you and your stuff from point A to point B. Bikes do that too, though at a smaller scale.
If your commute or your errands aren't excessively long or require the use of a controlled-access highway, a bike's a perfectly fine alternative. The limiting factors are seasonal road or bike path maintenance and the discipline of other road users.
A city near me (Davis, CA) requires all bicycles to have a license and can confiscate unlicensed bicycles.
As of 2023 municipalities and counties can no longer mandate bicycle registration. (See https://law.justia.com/codes/california/code-veh/division-16... as amended by sec. 7 at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...) Though universities, like UC Davis, might still be able to require it for bikes on campus.
I hadn't heard of the requirement before. Mandatory registration originally seems to have been intended to address bike theft. All bicycles sold in California must have a serial number. A significant number of cities (most?) had ordinances requiring registration. But few people knew about it and even fewer registered their bikes.
So imagine you attend a planned protest at the state capitol.
You drive and when within 3 miles your car dies.
You can start it again and drive away, turning around and leaving, but if you go further towards the capitol it dies again.
The next day the press reports that the planned protest was very sparsely attended.
Do protests have parking?
I'd prefer something with a slightly more libertarian bent:
The hardware is required in new cars. It's illegal to make it report false values or for someone other than the driver to record. When you press the start button, an LED shines into your skin and records fingerprint hash, blood alcohol. This data is recorded/reported only when a public road has been entered or crossed, and erased from local storage in 24 hours.
The reporting is optional. You can turn it off. You set it up to report to your insurance company. If you don't, your insurance rates will probably rise.
What does society get out of this? People are strongly encouraged not to drink and drive. They get a clear and unambiguous signal if they are over the legal limit or not. We get some insurance data about how many people are drinking and driving nonetheless, and their actual accident rates. There's no emergency situation where someone can't activate their car. Drivers' "freedom" to drive without insurance or without historical monitoring isn't infringed. You can still drive drunk on private property without consequence.
Imagine driving in a remote road on a cold night, no cell signal, a deer crosses the road and you swerve to avoid it. The car thinks your drunk and kills the car.
You're stuck, no cell signal, good chance of hypothermia.
A bigger, real-world problem is that cars with lane-keeping assist will steer you back towards the deer.
Some of the earlier EVs I tried had lane-keeping assist so brutal that it was like trying to steer a car with a broken power steering pump belt, if it didn't want you to change lanes - genuinely dangerous.
The Kia EV I tried a few weeks ago just felt like it was tramlining a bit when I changed lanes without indicating (no real need to indicate, on a completely empty road).
Maybe we should pass laws to ban driving. Then nobody will get hurt!
Very gross, overstepping, and creepy.
In my car, I regularly get a notice that I'm not being attentive and that I should go for a coffee break. It's never right and my best guess is that it's always on a straight highway road for more than 15 minutes where I'm not moving the wheel very much. I don't think this kill switch is a good idea and might attract unnecessary attention from law enforcement who might ding me for something completely unrelated (going 6mph above speed limit).
I have heard stories in Minneapolis about ICE remotely unlocking cars and opening windows. This seems technically possible to me. It makes me worry about public safety if the government has this control. I imagine a future where the government disables cars based on a score in a Palantir database. We need the right to use a car to escape danger. I also think encryption is important for defense against tyranny. The Second Amendment should protect encryption too.
The devil is in the details. The democrats for this (that didn't vote for this) need to change the existing law so it has strong privacy requirements. Right now the law is that regulations must be created - but what those regulations are is up to whatever bureaucrat decides to make them: they could be good or bad.