V16 Surveillance
Was watching the news last night here in Catalunya and there was an article about the lack of ability of manufacturers to produce enough V16 alert beacons for cars in Spain before the law gets activated on the 1st January 2026.
This is probably because no one mentioned this law until a couple of weeks ago and now there appears to have been a bit o’ “mission creep” in its deployment.
The idea is to replace the reflective triangle thing you had to place at the roadside if you broke down with a flashy light, which meant you didn’t have to get out your car and get killed trying to plonk said triangle at the side of the road. You could just press a button and wait to get killed by someone rear ending you whilst they looked at cat videos whilst driving, all from the comfort of your car seat.
Basically, it is a new bit of civil servant bullshit to replace an older bit of civil servant bullshit.
So, I was straight onto Amazon and ordered 3 of the cheapest offerings.
And that’s when I noticed the “oddness.”
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There’s a choice between normal ones and DGT (Spain’s Traffic bunch) approved ones and the DGT approved ones are all connected via SIM cards to someplace. Cue offers various with “no subscription until <date>” options, “free connection until <date>” options and assorted very high prices. Given that a 500Mb per month SIM is only 1 euro, it all feels a bit Con Air.
So, what Spain is basically introducing is surveillance by the back door.
You buy a connected …
…V16 (which when you buy it requires giving out masses of PII)
…for your car (which when you bought it requires giving out masses of PII),
…the SIM gets registered in your name (which requires giving out masses of PII).
So, the Spanish state from Jan 1 2026 is basically able to track every journey you make in your car and you are paying for the privilege. And if you don’t have one you get fined.
The 3 I bought are not connected to anything, so I’ll probably get pulled because I’m invisible to the system.
Hey ho. I’ve got a V16 in the car, so road plod can piss off.
