Something that can't be forgotten, is how future vehicles won't be independent from one another. A vehicle will be in continuous communication with surrounding vehicles, and all vehicles in a particular location will be processing and reacting to information from one another as a person simply could not do.
Seems to me, a vehicle can have a kill-switch to cover all bases, and other vehicles will simply react as necessary to avoid collisions, etc.
...and no matter what, unless 'nads are somehow grown, the day of fully tracked and recorded travel will be upon us.
The day of fully tracked and recorded travel is
already upon us. It's just that the tracking records aren't fully consolidated at this point.
Tracking someone doing a cross-country trip can be done by:
(a) looking at the target's mobile phone HLR and checking to find which VLRs his mobile connected to.
(b) looking at credit card usage, tracking fuel purchases - from gas stations and McDonalds.
(c) examining records from cameras on patrol cars, stationary traffic monitoring stations, gas stations, rest areas, toll stations and traffic lights.
(d) "pinging" the automobile to directly report its position via OnStar or other vehicle telematics services.
(e) "pinging" the suspect's phone to directly report its position via "MobileMe" or whatever Apple calls their system these days.
Contrary to popular belief, real-time continuous satellite tracking isn't really feasible for a number of reasons. But it doesn't matter. Some of these other approaches are way cheaper and much more effective.
And besides, why even bother tracking someone that closely? Extrapolating possible routes via "breadcrumbs" of past behavior can be trivial.
