The digital license plate that controls your every move
California is carrying out initial tests on 0.5 percent of newly registered vehicles for a digital license plate able to read messages sent from control center would show its road tax has been paid, and if not it could prevent a vehicle from circulating, or even indicate to other road users that it has been stolen. Initial trials, scheduled to be completed before January 2017, could start with commercial fleets such as car rentals or delivery services.
The state’s Department of Motor Vehicles is backing an initiative it says could save up to 20 million dollars a year, the amount it spends sending out road tax stickers, and one that clearly has widespread implications. The patent registered by the chosen supplier also includes the possibility of displaying advertising through an image on the license plate when the vehicle has been standing for more than five seconds, although for the moment the law only allows information strictly related to the car’s registration on the license plate.
Needless to say, the proposals have sparked controversy at a time when we are all discovering just how much surveillance our governments have us under. From the moment that a license plate ceases to be simply a metal or plastic strip with some numbers and letters on it to being a screen connected to a data base, we face a scenario where our vehicle effectively logs in when we start the engine and is then able to report our every movement. Why invest in costly license plate readers when the vehicle itself is able to process information about speed limits and even pay fines on the spot when we run a red light or make an illegal U-turn?
In other words, our vehicle has become a real time witness related to issues like fines payments, road tax, or breaking the rules of the road, as well as constantly updating a data base on our movements. The idea is the logical outcome of the concept of the connected car, something that is increasingly being built in to more and more new vehicles: from the moment that automobiles are equipped with a permanent internet connection that allows them to receive, say, information on traffic flow, the special equipment and costly infrastructure previously required to automate driving become superfluous. Within this context, the license plate is simply an exterior interface with myriad possibilities for displaying information about a vehicle.
Incorporating technological developments and processes in this way raises some questions that are common sense, such as reducing risk on the roads by preventing drivers from circulating without insurance or road test documents, or by preventing vehicle theft, for example. At the same time, such developments can also be seen as yet another step toward a Big Brother society where we are permanently under surveillance, the type of society that we have all been brought up to fear, and that implies a total rewriting of the social contract. We are talking about developments that are technically easy to implement, as well as cost effective. Is this really a road that we want to head down?
