San Jose University business professor Randall Stross raises an important warning in today’s New York Times, with a column titled “Caution: Driver May Be Surfing the Web” (Aug. 24, 2008). You see, Chrysler is about to make its 2009 model cars into internet hot-spots, capable of accessing the web while you enjoy your “living room on wheels” — with a feature it calls UConnect Web. We’ve been railing about the dangers of Driving While Phoning for years (most recently in June, over California’s phony new cellphone safety law). Stross points out the added danger of laptop surfing while driving:
The signals won’t be confined to the Nintendos in the rear seat; front-seat occupants will be able to stay online, too. Bad idea. As drivers, we have done poorly resisting the temptation to move our eyes away from the road to check e-mail or send text messages with our cellphones. Now add laptops.
Here’s how Chrysler described the new product in a Press Release last April (emphases added; via AutoBlog):
In-vehicle wireless Internet connectivity 
Chrysler is diligently working on an advanced, in-vehicle wireless system to provide increased security and convenience far beyond anything available today. The system will provide high-speed data transfer and convenience, combining WiFi and 4G connectivity for a new level of wireless technology.
This system will transform the vehicle into a “hot spot” to deliver Internet and e-mail access, and movie and music download capability directly to the vehicle.
While Chrysler will offer this technology in future model-year vehicles, an aftermarket in-vehicle “hot-spot” wireless Internet capability is planned through Mopar® in 2008.
PCMag.com reports that “the hotspot range will extend approximately 50 feet from the vehicle in all directions, and will combine both WiFi and 3G cellular connectivity.” That means we can also expect tailgaters (and SideGaters?) cruising close to steal the WiFi signal from a moving Chrysler, Dodge or Jeep vehicle
According to Endgadget, UConnect Web will cost $499. Chrysler shows back-seat usage of UConnect Web, but check out this photo from Endgaget (Aug. 13, 2008):
Stross quotes Tom Vanderbilt, the author of “Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)”:
“We’ve already seen fatalities from people looking at their laptops while driving. It seems absolutely surprising that Chrysler would open the door for a full-blown distraction like Internet access.”
After writing that book, Tom Vanderbilt shouldn’t be the least bit surprised that there is a market for this device and someone will make it and make a profit from it
Prof. Stross makes many additional points worth considering. Here are two:
- As Mr. Vanderbilt says in his book, many people have been willing to accept curtailed civil liberties as a response to terrorist threats, but many of the same people “have routinely resisted traffic measures designed to reduce the annual death toll,” like curbing cellphone use while driving.
- The decline in the total number of deaths [shown by official statistics] obscures a more complicated story. While we have made large gains curbing alcohol-impaired driving and instilling the habit of buckling up, we have wasted most of the gains by using cellphones while driving.
Stross ends his piece by asking: 
“Which occupants in the car will most avidly use UConnect? Is it the children in the back with game consoles that provide plenty of self-contained entertainment without the Internet? Or is it the adults in the front seat, whose ability — never strong — to voluntarily remain unconnected is now disappearing?
“Will we notice if our living room on wheels, fully loaded with every amenity, sails off the road?”
I’m tired of having irresponsible, tech-happy drivers — and greedy manufacturers — who make the roads of America even more dangerous than they have to be. And, I’m even more tired of cowardly politicians who won’t help rid our roads of these devices. It seems clear that we cannot rely on either common sense or civic duty. As things get worse, we only have ourselves to blame for not demanding laws to control undisciplined, selfish drivers, who — like Chrysler — simply don’t care about the risks they take with all of our lives.
afterwords (Aug. 25, 2008): Scott Greenfield of Simple Justice — the only notable blawger willing to speak out against techno-insanity — has posted “Begging for a crash,” in sympathy with this post. Among other Scott-ish insights, he notes that “People can’t drive worth a lick now” and wonders why groups like MADD “will do nothing about a novelty like this that will impact far more people than drunk drivers.”