May 17
In the 10 years since President Clinton ordered the military to unscramble the GPS signal, the big benefit has been to increase accuracy from about 100 yards to just a few feet. It makes navigation devices more accurate. Before, when civilians got what was called selective availability, GPS knew more or less if you were on the highway; now it knows if you’re centered in your lane. It’s still not good enough for autonomous driving. But there are other benefits we’ll see before we see self-driving cars:
Of course, every time you call it an “
If you were to pick a handful of businesses the average consumer would describe as capable of sticking it to buyers, the top of the list would have auto dealers along with, say, mattress stores, payday loan firms, and bankruptcy-assistance firms. Car dealers are running a full-court lobbying press for exemption from pending consumer protection legislation. Proponents of better protection laws include some groups you’d never imagine, such as the military, which says the hassles of dealing with car dealers and car-loan provisions hurt our military preparedness. Much of the consumer protection laws affecting dealers is at the state level. Dealers say that’s enough.
