From Boing Boing:
Sales are booming for lo-jack style devices designed to remotely kill cars when their owners fall behind on payments… they contain GPS units that make the car’s location continuously available to the dealer, credit-company (and others) so that they can more easily repossess the cars… the company promises to throttle the engine of any car that they’re told is involved in a police chase.
Since it is clear that these devices (which I am sure are on the Christmas list of every member of Messrs. ACPO plc) are commercially available at a price which makes this application cost-effective, would anyone like to guess how long it will be before they become compulsory here?
Not, of course, that I mean ‘made compulsory by statute law’. That might be controversial, because this country does not support a car repossession industry anything like that of the USA, and thus lacks the obvious justification. What I mean is ‘made effectively compulsory by insurers suddenly refusing to renew the insurance of those who don’t have one’.
