An American kind of keep your lane routine has gradually developed on the five lanes of the route-controlled A2 towards Utrecht. You only overtake if your adaptive cruise control is set just two kilometers faster than your predecessor, but in principle everyone stays on their own track. That adjustment process is quite orderly. The trucks with 87 on the right, next to the most careful drivers with 96, on the center lane the hundred drivers, on the leftmost lanes the daredevils who dare to tear it out of the ordinary with 103.
While I slowly but gradually pass the 96 kilometers customers with a tight 100 on the cruise in the mid-lane, I see in my rear-view mirror approaching two motorcyclists with more than the legal speed. With blood-aggressive pushing gestures, they signal me and my lane mates to move one lane to the right. They seem to enjoy the display of power. Through their helmet visor I see them looking at me a little too menacingly. I’m sick of it. What a pointless theater too. Nobody breaks the law, they are careful. Big brother is watching. I see those camera batteries over the road and think, damn it.
Well. We can blame the state, we give the spies themselves all the space. Your car itself is of course just as hard to watch. More and more models are connected, always and everywhere. Mine too, on the way on the A2. The Mercedes EQA knows my destination and my route, monitors my speed and driving behavior, my steering movements and the pedal pressure of my right foot, keeps me within the lines of the center lane, asks me to stop if it thinks I’m tired and pedals patronically the brakes in corners that I take too fast in his opinion. Anyone who wants to follow me closely in a secret data center can have fun; my whole life is in the street.
Tesla is still asking you for permission to record driving data with the on-board cameras, but I have little faith that all manufacturers will let the precious data out so easily. With the Chinese you are literally face to face with the Trojan Horse. In the left A-pillar of the Aiways U5, an inboard camera watches the driver. In the Seres 3’s infotainment system, I was amazed to find video recordings of all my test drives. After erasing them one by one and thinking I turned off the system, the next day I found two fresh recordings. It makes you feel uncomfortable. The virtual net that surrounds us is starting to close.
We all knew that for a long time, of course. In fact, we are constantly warned about the risks, also in the Netherlands. Journalist Huib Modderkolk wrote his book in 2019 It’s war, but no one sees it about data abuse, data manipulation, scary hacking practices by secret services – horrifying. Jan Kuitenbrouwer wrote The data dictatorship about the regulationlessness and privacy sensitivity of the digital world. Citizens do and do not care. He is supposedly shocked to learn of it and returns to the order of the day. While everyone is getting upset about illegal parties and one and a half meter sinners in the Vondelpark, he lets the cookie monster fish unlimited big data on the internet and on the way on-board cameras and other spies follow all his movements online. There is enormous danger in that indifference. That is why I got such an unpleasant feeling from the appearance of those motor mice, while those guard dogs could not be blamed formally. I saw them as a symbol of a power that, thanks to us, has all the means to immediately become totalitarian. Maybe that’s why I love my old Volvos so much. They have become a kind of analogue traffic island. There is no online multimedia system on board. I am not connected. I turn off the phone these days. I am unreachable. I’m free. I used to think nostalgically: what peace. Relieved now: What a safe thought. But it is high time for a serious debate about the data indolence of cars.