Will Big Brother ride in your car?

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Sep. 18, 2005

This week’s edition of The Economist (subscription required) describes a number of technology initiatives around the world that aim to have your car tell your government what you’re doing.

In the United Arab Emirates, IBM has a $125 million government contract to design and develop a real-time telematics service for the UAE’s accident-plagued motorists that, among other things, uses GPS to monitor a car’s speed and compare it to the posted speed limit, sending the data to a central monitoring facility. The system is also capable of driver identification via RFID tags.

Meanwhile, some European countries have already introduced automatic toll road systems for trucks, with expansion to include cars likely to happen sooner than later.

The British government has even proposed a “pay as you go” road tax system, using a GPS tracking device in your car to report on your day-to-day use of Britain’s roads.

So far the UAE’s project is the most ambitious. Scheduled for a 2009 roll-out, it may point the way to the future of driving, like it or not.