Rep. Scott Perry, R-Penn., wants to kill the kill switch.
A bill Perry is seeking to push through Congress would rescind a provision in former President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that mandates all new cars to come preinstalled with technology that ostensibly monitors whether a driver’s blood alcohol levels are above the legal limit and can shut their vehicle off remotely.
“If you don’t know what a kill switch is,” Perry explained in an interview with Fox News Digital, “it’s exactly what it sounds like. It kills your vehicle. The vehicle itself decides whether it appreciates and approves of your driving based on a series of algorithms, computer metrics, etcetera, about how it thinks you should be driving. And if you’re not comporting with that, it shuts the vehicle off.”
The two-paragraph No Kill Switches In Cars Act, shorter than the law it seeks to repeal, would nix the Biden-era provision that mandates all new cars contain technology which “monitors a driver’s performance to identify driver impairment” and which “must also prevent or limit vehicle operation if the system determines the driver may be intoxicated or impaired.”
Perry argued the law was an encroachment on the civil liberties of Americans, and that it would violate the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment and make vehicles unnecessarily expensive.
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“Cars are expensive and one of the reasons they’re expensive is because we have all these systems on them. I’m a person that uses my mirrors to back up,” Perry explained.
“I’ve never had an accident backing up or parking, but yet, if I buy a new car, I don’t have an option whether I get a camera in the car or not. Maybe I want a new car, but I can’t afford the camera and the lane assist, and now all these other features that are in the car monitoring me. I’m not allowed to buy that car. My goodness, this is America. We should be able to buy what we want. If you can’t afford that stuff or don’t want that stuff, it should be your choice.
Perry explained that he was all for efforts to mitigate drunk and impaired driving, even admitting that he’s had family members affected by the phenomenon, but explained that the Biden-era provision was “a bridge too far.”
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“We’ve had impaired driving incidents within my own family. So we’re well aware of the consequences, the pain, and the potential bad, catastrophic results of driving impaired. Whether it’s drinking or something else, we get that. And that’s why I think that we are supportive of other measures and enforcement of those measures, but not trying to seek to punish every single person that drives a car for the sake of the few that abuse that.”
Perry imagined a number of scenarios in which a kill switch could improperly result in a driver who wasn’t under the influence of alcohol losing access to their vehicle.
“My wife was pregnant at one time, and we did leave to go deliver the baby. And I can just tell you, as a guy that’s had a pregnant wife, they’re very intensively interested in getting to the hospital in a timely fashion,” Perry joked wryly.
“And I just picture somebody that they’re trying to, maybe they’re trying to get themselves to the hospital, maybe they are the husband, or the father of the child is not around, and they’re driving differently than they have been in the past and the car just shuts off. Or another circumstance that I’ve envisioned where some young lady is leaving a store or some establishment and someone is following her, and she’s scared, and she decides, ‘Well, I think I’m just going to go to the police station. I’ve got to find the police station.’ So while you’re driving, You’re trying to look it up. Where is it? And the car decides you’re driving erratically and shuts off, that’s the worst time for the car to shut off,” he said.
“I live in central Pennsylvania, but it’s hot in Arizona right now. I’ve been there. There are long stretches of highway. It’s over 100 degrees. Your car decides to shut off, and you’re left walking out in 100 degrees, maybe you’re impaired, maybe the heat affects you physically. And, you know, there’s a million scenarios that haven’t been envisioned right now, where Americans’ rights are being taken away, and the nanny state is forcing itself upon us.”
“The intentions are fine,” he continued. “We all want to stop drunk driving. But you don’t punish everybody else for the sake of the few that violate the law. We don’t do that in the United States of America, but yet we’re choosing to do it here.”
To Perry, the kill switch law is not simply about mitigating drunk driving, but indicative of a broader encroachment of corporate and biometric surveillance into the civil liberties of Americans everywhere.
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“Couple it with all the other things that are happening at the same,” Perry said. “Consider artificial intelligence, with facial recognition software, with gait analysis… with central bank digital currency,” he continued. “One of the major car companies just applied for patents to monitor while you’re driving your pupils, your respiration, your breathing, your heart rate, your conversation… and then the censorship of people online for their opinions. All that is part of the same conversation. I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. And the constitution says that American citizens are not subject to unlawful search and seizure, and I think that this is a pretty good indication that there is unlawful search.”
Perry again noted that “nobody is for drunk driving,” but argued that mitigation efforts should be focused on enforcing existing laws and cooperating with law enforcement.
“What we should be for is punishing those and dealing with those who choose to drive impaired or unwittingly do it, but you don’t punish everybody else for the sake of the few that do. I happen to not drink at all. So why should I… why should anybody have their privacy monitored and interrupted without a warrant, but also be forced to pay for it,” Perry said.
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Though Biden‘s bill required the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to codify the law in its vehicle manufacturing regulation code, the agency missed a 2024 deadline, in part due to the logistical challenges of a lack of available monitoring technology.
A spokesperson for the agency told Fox News Digital that NHTSA is currently evaluating public comments on the agency’s research into monitoring and into the rule.
The spokesperson noted in particular a line in the agency’s 2024 report to Congress which cast doubt on the immediate availability of passive impairment monitoring technology.
“Of the technologies reviewed, most were in an early state of research and development or were not designed for in-vehicle use. Though the two 2024 reports documented some promising technologies, neither report found commercially available technology that detects driver alcohol impairment accurately and passively,” the report read.
“Currently, detection technology around the legal limit continues to have an error rate that would be unacceptably high,” the report also read.
Though Perry has picked up a growing number of GOP lawmakers to support his bill – 21 lawmakers have joined the original 14 introducing members as co-sponsors – advocacy organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) disagree entirely with the premise of the term “kill switch.”
“MADD does not support government surveillance, remote vehicle control or shutdowns, GPS tracking, or the collection, sharing, or sale of personal driving data,” the organization told Fox News Digital in a statement.
“The law directs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to develop a federal vehicle safety standard through an open, transparent rulemaking process that must include public input, rigorous testing and strong privacy safeguards. Once fully implemented, the law will save more than 10,000 lives every year. Americans should not have to choose between protecting individual privacy and preventing drunk driving. We can, and should, accomplish both. In 2024 alone, 11,904 people lost their lives to this entirely preventable crime. We believe Americans deserve every reasonable protection available to stop drunk driving tragedies while protecting privacy and civil liberties. Unnecessary delays based on inaccurate descriptions of what the law actually requires only prolong the devastating toll drunk driving continues to take on families and communities across the country,” the statement concluded.
