[13of40]

A year or two ago, my newish car was at the shop, recovering from a fender bender, and I got a call from the police asking where it was. I told them and they said that matched with the coordinates they had. It turned out that the SOS system had malfunctioned, and the GPS and integrated 4g (which I didn't even know I had, because the car doesn't have a built in navigation system or voice phone) had been phoning home and telling the car company I was in trouble. I called the manufacturer and asked if I had a subscription to this service, and I was informed that the car had a subscription, and I couldn't cancel it. Luckily I appealed to the dealership and after a couple of days the sent me a "confidential" pdf with instructions on how to unplug the spy module...which of course threw up all kinds of scary warnings starting the car after that... until it suddenly didn't anymore. So now I have a dumb car, and I love it more than ever.

[LAC-Tech]

I can't imagine living in a place where there's enough police for any of them give a shit about stolen cars. Jealous!

[spaetzleesser]

I lived in Sonoma County for a while and there they followed up everything, even noise complaints. Same for the post office. It’s nice to live in a wealthy area.

[wrycoder]

It also helps when the police have very few complaints to follow up.

[kQq9oHeAz6wLLS]

I gotta know now...what make and model?

[13of40]

2017 BMW X3. I forget what the module is called, but it's behind the panel in the cargo area on the left side.

[titzer]

That's bizarre. Given that Germans generally care more about privacy than most, it's surprising that BMW would be doing that.

[DocTomoe]

That module will soon be mandated by EU law [1], BMW just jumped the queue

[1] https://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/EN/Articles/StV/Roadtraffic/n...

[toss1]

May I ask what kind of car that was, and what country?

[vetinari]

AFAIK the SOS system is mandatory in any new car sold in EU since 31.3.2018.

[nunez]

I think your BMW had those because both (4G hotspot and navigation) can be "enabled" remotely through upgrades to iDrive

[megablast]

Good. Every car needs to be tracked at all times. They are death machines, responsible for over s million deaths worldwide every year. It is insane we allow this.

[smegger001]

so are knives but i don't think my folding pocket knife needs gps tracker built in

[couchand]

You raise a goood point, deaths by knife do approach (checks notes) a rounding error on the number of auto deaths.

[baash05]

mosquitoes?